Automated debugging from pre-silicon to post-silicon

Abstract

Due to the increasing design size and complexity of modern Integrated Circuits (IC) and the decreasing time-to-market, debugging is one of the major bottlenecks in the IC development cycle. This paper presents a generalized approach to automate debugging which can be used in different scenarios from design debugging to post-silicon debugging. The approach is based on model-based diagnosis. Diagnostic traces are proposed as an enhancement reducing debugging time and increasing diagnosis accuracy. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the approach in post-silicon debugging.