Debug Automation from Pre-Silicon to Post-Silicon

This book describes automated debugging approaches for the bugs and the faults which appear in different abstraction levels of a hardware system. The authors employ a transaction-based debug approach to systems at the transaction-level, asserting the correct relation of transactions. The automated debug approach for design bugs finds the potential fault candidates at RTL and gate-level of a circuit. Debug techniques for logic bugs and synchronization bugs are demonstrated, enabling readers to localize the most difficult bugs. Debug automation for electrical faults (delay faults) finds the potentially failing speedpaths in a circuit at gate-level. The various debug approaches described achieve high diagnosis accuracy and reduce the debugging time, shortening the IC development cycle and increasing the productivity of designers.