Verification of the cell broadband engine™ processor

Authors:
Kanna Shimizu;Sanjay Gupta;Tatsuya Koyama;Takashi Omizo;Jamee Abdulhafiz;Larry McConville;Todd Swanson
Affiliations:
IBM Corporation, Austin, Texas;IBM Corporation, Austin, Texas;Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., Tokyo, Japan;Toshiba Corporation, Ohme, Japan;IBM Corporation, Austin, Texas;IBM Corporation, Austin, Texas;IBM Corporation, Austin, Texas
Venue:
Proceedings of the 43rd annual Design Automation Conference
Year:
2006

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Abstract

Successfully developing an implementation of entirely new chip architecture such as the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) processor from scratch is a notable achievement.Consider further the design complexity (234 million transistors) and the project management complexity (5 participating companies, work in 5 different time zones), and the task seems quite challenging.This paper describes how the central verification team staffed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), Toshiba Corporation, and IBM, produced on first silicon a Cell BE microprocessor functional enough to boot an operating system and run applications.