Evolutionary test program induction for microprocessor design verification

Abstract

Design verification is a crucial step in the design of any electronic device. Particularly when microprocessor cores are considered, devising appropriate test cases may be a difficult task. This paper presents a methodology able to automatically induce a test program for maximizing a given verification metric. The methodology is based on an evolutionary paradigm and exploits a syntactical description of microprocessor assembly language and an RT-level functional model. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the approach.