Accelerating microprocessor silicon validation by exposing ISA diversity

Microprocessor design validation is a time consuming and costly task that tends to be a bottleneck in the release of new architectures. The validation step that detects the vast majority of design bugs is the one that stresses the silicon prototypes by applying huge numbers of random tests. Despite its bug detection capability, this step is constrained by extreme computing needs for random tests simulation to extract the bug-free memory image for comparison with the actual silicon image. We propose a self-checking method that accelerates silicon validation and significantly increases the number of applied random tests to improve bug detection efficiency and reduce time-to-market. Analysis of four major ISAs (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and x86) reveals their inherent diversity: more than three quarters of the instructions can be replaced with equivalent instructions. We exploit this property in post-silicon validation and propose a methodology for the generation of random tests that detect bugs by comparing results of equivalent instructions. We support our bug detection method in hardware with a light-weight mechanism which, in case of a mismatch, replays the random test replacing the offending instruction with its equivalent. Our bug detection method and corresponding hardware significantly accelerate the post-silicon validation process. Evaluation of the method on an x86 microprocessor model demonstrates its efficiency over simulation-based and self-checking alternatives, in terms of bug detection capabilities and validation time speedup.