Analyzing a PowerPC" 620 Microprocessor Silicon Failure using Model Checking

  • Authors:
  • Richard Raimi;James Lear

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • ITC '97 Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE International Test Conference
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

When silicon is available, newly designed microprocessors are tested inspecially equipped hardware laboratories,where real applications can be run at hardware speeds.However, the large volumes of code being run, plus thelimited access to the internal nodes of the chip, make itextraordinarily difficult to characterize the nature of anyfailures that occur.In this paper, we describe how the formal verificationtechnique of temporal logic model checking was used toquickly characterize a design error exhibited during hardware testing of the PowerPC 620 microprocessor. Weclaim that model checking can efficiently characterize suchfailures when certain pre-conditions are met. We also showhow the same error could have been revealed early in thedesign cycle, by model checking a short and simple correctness specification. We discuss the implications of this forverification methodologies over the full design cycle.