University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Zoom Out and See Better: Scalable Message Tracing for Post-Silicon SoC Debug

Pal, Debjit; Vasudevan, Shobha

Content Files
UILU-ENG-17-2203.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/98857

Description

Title
Zoom Out and See Better: Scalable Message Tracing for Post-Silicon SoC Debug
Author(s)
  • Pal, Debjit
  • Vasudevan, Shobha
Issue Date
2017-11
Keyword(s)
  • Post-silicon debug
  • Observability
  • Tracing hardware
  • OpenSPARC T2
Date of Ingest
2017-12-01T15:05:31Z
Abstract
We present a method for selecting trace messages for post-silicon validation of System-on-Chip (SoC). Our message selection is guided by specifications of interacting flows in common user applications. In current practice, such messages are selected based on designer expertise. We formulate the problem as an optimization of mutual information gain and trace buffer utilization. Our approach scales to systems far beyond the capacity of current signal selection techniques. We achieve an average trace buffer utilization of 98.96% with an average flow specification coverage of 94.3% and an average bug localization to only 21.11% of the potential root causes in our large-scale debugging effort. We present efficacy of our selected messages in debugging and root cause analysis using five realistic case studies consisting of complex and subtle bugs from the OpenSPARC T2 processor.
Publisher
Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Coordinated Science Laboratory Report no. UILU-ENG-17-2203
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Technical Report
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98857
Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)
IBM

Owning Collections

Report - Coordinated Science Laboratory PRIMARY