Developing an architecture validation suite: application to the PowerPC architecture

This paper describes the efforts made and the results of creating an Architecture Validation Suite for the PowerPC architecture. Although many functional test suites are available for multiple architectures, little has been published on how these suites are developed and how their quality should be measured. This work provides some insights for approaching the difficult problem of building a high quality functional test suite for a given architecture. By defining a set of generic coverage models that combine program-based, specification-based and sequential bug-driven models, it establishes the groundwork for the development of architecture validation suites for any architecture.