Reconfigurable Bus Monitor Tool Suite for on-chip SoC for performance and protocol monitoring

Today, due to the process of semiconductor improve rapidly, the number of transistors in the same area becomes more than before. This causes the integration and verification of SoC more complex. Although IP designers have verified IP carefully themselves. But the transaction problem of bus between different IPs may occur in SoC. We developed a debug tool which make designer's SoC verification easier - Reconfigurable Bus Monitor Tool Suite (RBMTS). It contains 2 software tool and 1 hardware monitor. Designers can configure any bus assertions into the Reconfigurable Bus Monitor (RBM) hardware under the capability of the hardware. It can help designer to monitor bus protocol, performance monitor and specific bus conditions. We proposed many implementation methods of RBM hardware according to its function and area-cost. User then instantiate the design parameter of RBM hardware into RBM generator tool to generate hardware. The configuration and analysis GUI helps designers configure the assertion control into RBM hardware and analyze the final result. The monitor is for both pre-silicon and post-silicon debug purpose. This really reduces critical time-to-market time and turnaround time for today's IC design.