Citation
Sung-Boem Park, Subhasish Mitra. "IFRA: Instruction Footprint Recording and Analysis for Post-Silicon Bug Localization of Processors". Design Automation Conference, June, 2008.

Abstract
The objective of IFRA, Instruction Footprint Recording and Analysis, is to overcome the challenges associated with a very expensive step in post-silicon validation of processors – bug localization in a system setup. IFRA consists of special design and analysis techniques required to bridge a major gap between system-level and circuit-level debug. Special hardware recorders, called Footprint Recording Structures (FRS’s), record semantic information about data and control flows of instructions passing through various design blocks of a processor. This information is recorded concurrently during normal operation of a processor in a post-silicon system validation setup. Upon detection of a problem, the recorded information is scanned out and analyzed for bug localization. Special program analysis techniques, together with the binary of the application executed during post-silicon validation, are used for the analysis. IFRA does not require full system-level reproduction of bugs or system-level simulation. Simulation results on a complex super-scalar processor demonstrate that IFRA is effective in accurately localizing bugs with very little impact on overall chip area.

Electronic downloads

• ifra.dac08.final.final.pdf · application/pdf · 317 kbytes

Citation formats

• HTML

  Sung-Boem Park, Subhasish Mitra. <a
  href="http://www.gigascale.org/pubs/1312.html">IFRA:
  Instruction Footprint Recording and Analysis for
  Post-Silicon Bug Localization of Processors</a>,
  Design Automation Conference, June, 2008.

• Plain text

  Sung-Boem Park, Subhasish Mitra. "IFRA: Instruction
  Footprint Recording and Analysis for Post-Silicon Bug
  Localization of Processors". Design Automation Conference,
  June, 2008.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{ParkMitra08_IFRAInstructionFootprintRecordingAnalysisForPostSilicon,
      author = {Sung-Boem Park and Subhasish Mitra},
      title = {IFRA: Instruction Footprint Recording and Analysis
                for Post-Silicon Bug Localization of Processors},
      booktitle = {Design Automation Conference},
      month = {June},
      year = {2008},
      abstract = {The objective of IFRA, Instruction Footprint
                Recording and Analysis, is to overcome the
                challenges associated with a very expensive step
                in post-silicon validation of processors – bug
                localization in a system setup. IFRA consists of
                special design and analysis techniques required to
                bridge a major gap between system-level and
                circuit-level debug. Special hardware recorders,
                called Footprint Recording Structures (FRS’s),
                record semantic information about data and control
                flows of instructions passing through various
                design blocks of a processor. This information is
                recorded concurrently during normal operation of a
                processor in a post-silicon system validation
                setup. Upon detection of a problem, the recorded
                information is scanned out and analyzed for bug
                localization. Special program analysis techniques,
                together with the binary of the application
                executed during post-silicon validation, are used
                for the analysis. IFRA does not require full
                system-level reproduction of bugs or system-level
                simulation. Simulation results on a complex
                super-scalar processor demonstrate that IFRA is
                effective in accurately localizing bugs with very
                little impact on overall chip area.},
      URL = {http://www.gigascale.org/pubs/1312.html}
  }
  

Posted by Subhasish Mitra on 1 Jul 2008..

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