Early closure to functional correctness of the final chip has become a crucial success factor in the
semiconductor industry. In this context, the tedious task of functional debugging poses a significant
bottleneck in modern electronic design processes, where new problems related to debugging are constantly
introduced and predominantly performed manually. This dissertation proposes methodologies
that address two emerging debugging problems in modern design flows.
First, it proposes a novel and automated triage framework for Register-Transfer-Level (RTL) debugging.
The proposed framework employs clustering techniques to automate the grouping of a plethora of
failures that occur during regression verification. Experiments demonstrate accuracy improvements of
up to 40% compared to existing triage methodologies.
Next, it introduces new techniques for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) debugging that
leverage reconfigurability to allow debugging to operate without iterative executions of computationally-intensive
design re-synthesis tools. Experiments demonstrate productivity improvements of up to 30 x
vs. conventional approaches.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/65596 |
| Date | 04 July 2014 |
| Creators | Poulos, Zissis Paraskevas |
| Contributors | Veneris, Andreas |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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