Method and apparatus for testing programmable integrated circuits

A method of testing an IC generates a test design list of test patterns and produces an arc usage string for each test pattern. The arc usage strings are ranked according to the number of untested arcs in each successive test pattern by comparing each of the remaining arc usage strings against an already-tested arc file to identify the arc usage string (test pattern) having the greatest number of untested arcs. A test sequence list of test patterns ranked in order of the most number of untested arcs to the least number of untested arcs is provided to a tester and the IC is tested in order of the test patterns on the test sequence list.