NDLI: Is state mapping essential for equivalence checking custom memories in scan-based designs?

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Krishnamurthy, N. Bhadra, J. Abadir, M.S. Abraham, J.A.
Copyright Year	2002
Description	Author affiliation: Motorola, Austin, TX, USA (Krishnamurthy, N.; Bhadra, J.; Abadir, M.S.)
Abstract	Equivalence checking between Register Transfer Level (RTL) descriptions and transistor level descriptions of custom memories is an important step in the design flow of high performance microprocessors. Equivalence checking can be done with or without the knowledge of state mapping between the two descriptions. We present evidence that because of state mapping, our verification technique exercises system behavior that exposes hard-to-detect bugs that might otherwise go undetected. This paper defines Crossover Bugs (CB's) that can be present in scan-based custom designs and that are inherently hard-to-detect without state mapping. We demonstrate that such bugs can be missed by equivalence checking techniques that do not have state mappings between the two descriptions. By identifying the state correspondences between the RTL and the transistor implementation of custom memories, a more rigorous equivalence check can be performed compared to traditional equivalence checking methods such as product machine constructions. We also compare the time and memory complexities of crossover bug detection capability of the two equivalence checking approaches. We conclude with experimental results of CB detection on some of the custom designed embedded memories of Motorola's MPC 7455 microprocessor (compliant with IBM's PowerPC instruction set architecture).
Sponsorship	IEEE Comput. Soc. Test Technol. Tech. Council
Starting Page	275
Ending Page	280
File Size	261181
Page Count	6
File Format	PDF
ISBN	0769515703
DOI	10.1109/VTS.2002.1011152
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2002-04-28
Publisher Place	USA
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Computer bugs Computational modeling Circuit simulation Registers Microprocessors Testing Application specific processors Jacobian matrices Logic Silicon
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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