A Framework for the Validation of Processor Architecture Compliance

We present a framework for validating the compliance of a design with a given architecture. Our approach is centered on the concept of misinterpretations. These include missing behavior, wrong understanding of a behavior, or confusion with similar behavior described in the architecture or elsewhere. We formally capture the architecture behavior in the form of flowcharts and automatically derive a list of architecture misinterpretations from these flowcharts. These misinterpretations constitute the backbone of coverage models targeted by a suite of tests. The suite is automatically generated by a model-based test case generator. A compliance validation system based on these principles has been developed and used in two actual industrial processes of checking compliance with the PowerPC architecture. Categories and Subject Descriptors B.6.3 [Logic Design]: Design Aids--Verification General Terms Verification, Experimentation, Standardization Keywords Compliance suite, Conformance, Proce...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Allon Adir, Sigal Asaf, Laurent Fournier, Itai Jaeger, Ofer Peled
• Keywords: Architecture Behavior, Architecture Misinterpretations, Computer Architecture, DAC 2007, Keywords Compliance Suite