Abstract
Many modern microprocessor architectures utilize simultaneous multithreading (SMT) for increased performance. This trend is exemplified in IBM’s Power series of high-end microprocessors which steadily increased the number of threads in a system in its POWER5, POWER6 and POWER7 designs. In this paper we discuss the steady increase in functional verification complexity introduced by each of these designs and the corresponding improvements to SMT verification methods that were necessary in order to cope with the growing verification challenge. We review three different verification technologies which were specifically developed to target SMT aspects of processor designs, and compare their relative advantages and drawbacks. Our focus is on the novel Thread Irritation technique – we demonstrate its effectiveness in finding high quality SMT bugs early in the verification cycle, and show how it was adopted to the post-silicon platform.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Sinharoy, B., Kalla, R.N., Tendler, J.M., Eickemeyer, R.J., Joyner, J.B.: POWER5 system microarchitecture
Le, H.Q., Starke, W.J., Fields, J.S., O’Connell, F.P., Nguyen, D.Q., Ronchetti, B.J., Schwarz, W.M., Vaden, M.T.: IBM POWER6 microarchitecture. IBM Journal of Research & Development 51(6) (November 2007)
Burns, D.: Pre-Silicon Validation of Hyper-Threading technology. Intel Technology Journal, 16-21 (February 2002)
Kumar, J.: UltraSPARC Processor Emulation Verification: Getting HW/SW right the first time. DesignCon (2007), http://www.cdnusers.org/community/incisive/vtp_designcon2007_JaiKumar.pdf
EE-Times: POWER7, http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219400955J
Adir, A., Almog, E., Fournier, L., Marcus, E., Rimon, M., Vinov, M., Ziv, A.: Genesys-Pro: Innovations in Test Program Generation for Functional Processor Verification. IEEE Design & Test of Computers, 84–93 (March-April 2004)
Adir, A., Shurek, G.: Generating Concurrent Test-Programs with Collisions for Multiprocessor Verification. In: Seventh IEEE International High-Level Design Validation and Test Workshop (HLDVT 2002), pp. 77–82 (2002)
Victor, D.W., Ludden, J.M., Peterson, R.D., Nelson, B.S., Sharp, W.K.: Functional verification of the POWER5 microprocessor and the POWER5 multiprocessor systems. IBM Journal of Research and Development 49(4/5), 541–553 (2005)
Halfhill, T.R.: Intel’s Tiny Atom – New Low-Power Micro-architecture Rejuvenates the Embedded x86. Microprocessor Report 22 Archive (April 4, 2008)
Behm, M., Ludden, J., Lichtenstein, Y., Rimon, M., Vinov, M.: Industrial Experience with Test Generation Languages for Processor Verification. In: 41st Conference on Design Automation Conference (DAC 2004), pp. 36–40 (2004)
Kahle, J.A., Day, M.N., Hofstee, H.P., Johns, C.R., Maeurer, T.R., Shippy, D.: Introduction to the Cell multiprocessor. IBM Journal of Research and Development 49(4/5), 589–604 (2005)
Mitra, S., Seshia, S.A., Nicolici, N.: Post-Silicon Validation Opportunities, Challenges and Recent Advances. In: 47st Conference on Design Automation Conference (DAC 2010), pp. 12–17 (2010)
Nahir, A.: Multithreading post-silicon exerciser. In: Haifa Verification Conference (HVC 2008), https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/conferences/hvc2008/present/ThreadmillHVC2008.pdf
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ludden, J.M., Rimon, M., Hickerson, B.G., Adir, A. (2011). Advances in Simultaneous Multithreading Testcase Generation Methods. In: Barner, S., Harris, I., Kroening, D., Raz, O. (eds) Hardware and Software: Verification and Testing. HVC 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6504. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19583-9_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19583-9_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19582-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19583-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)