On Signal Selection for Visibility Enhancement in Trace-Based Post-Silicon Validation

Today's complex integrated circuit designs increasingly rely on post-silicon validation to eliminate bugs that escape from pre-silicon verification. One effective silicon debug technique is to monitor and trace the behaviors of the circuit during its normal operation. However, due to the associated overhead, designers can only afford to trace a small number of signals in the design. Selecting which signals to trace is therefore a crucial issue for the effectiveness of this technique. This paper proposes an automated trace signal selection strategy with a new probability-based evaluation metric, which is able to dramatically enhance the visibility in post-silicon validation. Experimental results on benchmark circuits show that the proposed technique is more effective than existing solutions.