A Many-Core Solution for the Multi-Objective Challenge in the Field of Dynamic Cycle Accurate Verification

The fundamental dynamic verification technologies are simulation, emulation and system prototyping. All differ in cost, bring-up time, compile/synthesis time, design capacity, execution speed and their possibilities to be used in-system. Many attempts have been made in the past to find hybrid solutions which are supposed to be superior to the traditional technologies. This paper evaluates on the aforementioned multi-objective challenge and identifies the key conflicting objectives in the field of dynamic verification. It shows, how the design under test (which can be considered as a directed graph) is mapped on a many-core based application specific network. This network is based on multiple processors, whereas each one is capable of running a dynamic number of threads. The system is mapped on an FPGA with many external SRAMs to cope with multimillion gate designs. The paper outlines, how the proposed FPGA overlay structure is combined with standard CPUs to build a heterogeneous many-core system. The system is then combined with application specific cores to provide a solution for a hybrid combination of the aforementioned technologies. Results are given for an SoC testcase based on the proposed manycore solution.