Article

A generic micro-architectural test plan approach for microprocessor verification

Authors:

Kirill ShoikhetAuthors Info & Claims

DAC '05: Proceedings of the 42nd annual Design Automation Conference

Pages 769 - 774

https://doi.org/10.1145/1065579.1065785

Published: 13 June 2005 Publication History

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Abstract

Modern microprocessors share several common types of micro-architectural building blocks. The rising complexity of the micro-architecture increases the risk of bugs and the difficulty of achieving comprehensive verification. We propose a methodology to exploit the commonality in the different microprocessors to create a design-independent micro-architectural test plan. Our method allows the testing of the huge micro-architectural test space by using systematic partitioning, which offers a high level of comprehensiveness of the tested behaviors. We show how this method was used to find bugs during verification of an actual high-end microprocessor. Our results show the advantages of this approach over the more traditional test methods that use design specific test plans or that use tools with little micro-architectural knowledge for covering micro-architectural aspects of the design.

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Cited By

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Barboza EKetkar MGratz PHu J(2024)Aiding Microprocessor Performance Validation with Machine Learning2024 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS)10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00011(1-9)Online publication date: 5-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00011
Hazra AGhosh PDasgupta PChakrabarti P(2012)Cohesive Coverage ManagementJournal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications10.1007/s10836-012-5308-128:4(449-468)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10836-012-5308-1
Yang FHuang WHuang ILevitan S(2007)Automatic verification of external interrupt behaviors for microprocessor designProceedings of the 44th annual Design Automation Conference10.1145/1278480.1278701(896-901)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1278480.1278701
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A generic micro-architectural test plan approach for microprocessor verification
1. Hardware
  1. Hardware validation
    1. Functional verification

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

DAC '05: Proceedings of the 42nd annual Design Automation Conference

June 2005

984 pages

ISBN:1595930582

DOI:10.1145/1065579

General Chair:
William H. Joyner
IBM Corp./SRC
,
Program Chairs:
Grant E. Martin
Tensilica, Inc.
,
Andrew B. Kahng
University of California at San Diego, CA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 June 2005

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June 13 - 17, 2005

California, Anaheim, USA

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Cited By

View all

Barboza EKetkar MGratz PHu J(2024)Aiding Microprocessor Performance Validation with Machine Learning2024 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS)10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00011(1-9)Online publication date: 5-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00011
Hazra AGhosh PDasgupta PChakrabarti P(2012)Cohesive Coverage ManagementJournal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications10.1007/s10836-012-5308-128:4(449-468)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10836-012-5308-1
Yang FHuang WHuang ILevitan S(2007)Automatic verification of external interrupt behaviors for microprocessor designProceedings of the 44th annual Design Automation Conference10.1145/1278480.1278701(896-901)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1278480.1278701
Gluska ASentovich E(2006)Practical methods in coverage-oriented verification of the merom microprocessorProceedings of the 43rd annual Design Automation Conference10.1145/1146909.1146996(332-337)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1146909.1146996
Azatchi HFournier LMarcus EUr SZiv AZohar K(2006)Advanced Analysis Techniques for Cross-Product CoverageIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2006.17355:11(1367-1379)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2006.173

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