Trace Based Post Silicon Validation For Vlsi Circuits

This book first provides a comprehensive coverage of state-of-the-art validation solutions based on real-time signal tracing to guarantee the correctness of VLSI circuits. The authors discuss several key challenges in post-silicon validation and provide automated solutions that are systematic and cost-effective. A series of automatic tracing solutions and innovative design for debug (DfD) techniques are described, including techniques for trace signal selection for enhancing visibility of functional errors, a multiplexed signal tracing strategy for improving functional error detection, a tracing solution for debugging electrical errors, an interconnection fabric for increasing data bandwidth and supporting multi-core debug, an interconnection fabric design and optimization technique to increase transfer flexibility and a DfD design and associated tracing solution for improving debug efficiency and expanding tracing window. The solutions presented in this book improve the validation quality of VLSI circuits, and ultimately enable the design and fabrication of reliable electronic devices.

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of System-on-Chip (SoC) post-silicon validation and debug challenges and state-of-the-art solutions with contributions from SoC designers, academic researchers as well as SoC verification experts. The readers will get a clear understanding of the existing debug infrastructure and how they can be effectively utilized to verify and debug SoCs.

This book provides comprehensive coverage of Network-on-Chip (NoC) security vulnerabilities and state-of-the-art countermeasures, with contributions from System-on-Chip (SoC) designers, academic researchers and hardware security experts. Readers will gain a clear understanding of the existing security solutions for on-chip communication architectures and how they can be utilized effectively to design secure and trustworthy systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on VLSI Design and Test, VDAT 2017, held in Roorkee, India, in June/July 2017. The 48 full papers presented together with 27 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 246 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections named: digital design; analog/mixed signal; VLSI testing; devices and technology; VLSI architectures; emerging technologies and memory; system design; low power design and test; RF circuits; architecture and CAD; and design verification.

The purpose of this book is to survey the state of the art and evolving directions in post-silicon and runtime verification. The authors start by giving an overview of the state of the art in verification, particularly current post-silicon methodologies in use in the industry, both for the domain of processor pipeline design and for memory subsystems. They then dive into the presentation of several new post-silicon verification solutions aimed at boosting the verification coverage of modern processors, dedicating several chapters to this topic. The presentation of runtime verification solutions follows a similar approach. This is an area of processor design that is still in its early stages of exploration and that holds the promise of accomplishing the ultimate goal of achieving complete correctness guarantees for microprocessor-based computation. The authors conclude the book with a look towards the future of late-stage verification and its growing role in the processor life-cycle.

Formal Verification: An Essential Toolkit for Modern VLSI Design presents practical approaches for design and validation, with hands-on advice to help working engineers integrate these techniques into their work. Formal Verification (FV) enables a designer to directly analyze and mathematically explore the quality or other aspects of a Register Transfer Level (RTL) design without using simulations. This can reduce time spent validating designs and more quickly reach a final design for manufacturing. Building on a basic knowledge of SystemVerilog, this book demystifies FV and presents the practical applications that are bringing it into mainstream design and validation processes at Intel and other companies. After reading this book, readers will be prepared to introduce FV in their organization and effectively deploy FV techniques to increase design and validation productivity. Learn formal verification algorithms to gain full coverage without exhaustive simulation Understand formal verification tools and how they differ from simulation tools Create instant test benches to gain insight into how models work and find initial bugs Learn from Intel insiders sharing their hard-won knowledge and solutions to complex design problems

This book describes automated debugging approaches for the bugs and the faults which appear in different abstraction levels of a hardware system. The authors employ a transaction-based debug approach to systems at the transaction-level, asserting the correct relation of transactions. The automated debug approach for design bugs finds the potential fault candidates at RTL and gate-level of a circuit. Debug techniques for logic bugs and synchronization bugs are demonstrated, enabling readers to localize the most difficult bugs. Debug automation for electrical faults (delay faults)finds the potentially failing speedpaths in a circuit at gate-level. The various debug approaches described achieve high diagnosis accuracy and reduce the debugging time, shortening the IC development cycle and increasing the productivity of designers. Describes a unified framework for debug automation used at both pre-silicon and post-silicon stages; Provides approaches for debug automation of a hardware system at different levels of abstraction, i.e., chip, gate-level, RTL and transaction level; Includes techniques for debug automation of design bugs and electrical faults, as well as an infrastructure to debug NoC-based multiprocessor SoCs.