© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

DEV: Design Explorer for VerificationJohn Lau Kah Soon, Low Ching Ling

IC Design Department

Altera Corporation

Malaysia

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Outline of Presentation

Introduction

Motivation and Related Work

Architecture Overview

Algorithms (with supporting results)

Applications and Results

Conclusion

Q & A

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Pavlidis & Friedman, 2009

Introduction

Current & Future Trends− Increase of complexity

SOC & SOPCMore than Moore (e.g. 3D IC Integration)

− Design cycle shorter− IP reuse

Problem Statements− ASIC designer − Verification engineer

Back

How can we obtain more visibilityHow can we obtain more visibilityand accessibility with least effort at and accessibility with least effort at

functional level of abstractionfunctional level of abstraction??

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Motivation and Related Work

Motivation− Google® search engine− Text data mining

Related Work− Zaki & Tahar

Focus on behavioral code visualization.

− HearstText data mining descriptions & applications.

− Assali & ZanghiMetadata hierarchy for a set of websites.

Back

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Architecture OverviewBack

Design databaseanalyzer

Design parser

IO metadataextractor

Structural metadataextractor

Behavioral metadataextractor

Hierarchical pathname generator

Hierarchical graphgenerator

Interpreter Graphics engine

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

AlgorithmsBack

Design

HDLCode Links

IO (Data Flow)Metadata

StructuralMetadata

DEVSequential search & modification

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

AlgorithmsBack

DEV

Design

Search result:-

[1] Behavioral Metadata

[2] Hierarchical Graph

[3] Hierarchical Path Name

Search query

IC Designer

Sequential search

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Supporting Results

Behavioral Metadata

Analogous to Google® Search Engine

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

AlgorithmsBack

DEV

Design

Search result:-

[1] Behavioral Metadata

[2] Hierarchical Graph

[3] Hierarchical Path Name

Search query

IC Designer

Sequential search

10

© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Supporting Results

Hierarchical Graph (Instantiation & Interconnection)

Hierarchical Path Name & Module Name

Back

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

AlgorithmsBack

DEV

Search query

IC Designer

IO (Data Flow)Metadata

StructuralMetadata

Search result

Information retrieval

Information retrieval

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Supporting ResultsBack

Structural Metadata

IO Metadata

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Applications and Results

Applications− Interfacing with other design flow and simulator.

e.g. tracing root cause(s) of a contention in chip.

− Understanding new or legacy designse.g. tracing a signal in ASIC design.

Results (next page)

Back

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Applications and ResultsBack

xtl

xliochnl

xf

X

X

(Output)

(Input)

Waveform viewing (or) EVCD translation

Waveform viewing (or) EVCD translation

$dumpports1

1

1

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Applications and Results

Applications− Interfacing with other design flow and simulator.

e.g. tracing root cause(s) of a contention in chip.

− Understanding new or legacy designse.g. tracing a signal in ASIC design.

Results (next page)

Back

16

© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Applications and Results

Tracing mrx_clk_pad_i in Ethernet MAC IP followed by MRxClk

Back

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Conclusion Foundational introduction

− Search engine in IC design.

Research and industry roadmap− Bigger role for search engine in design flow.

Current advantages− Time/productivity, memory consumption, and representation

method/flexibility.

Potential applications− Derived from search results.

Future works− Tool enhancement.− Optimizing current algorithms.− Adding support for other HDL.

Back

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© 2009 Altera Corporation—Public

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.

Q & AQ & A

1 Introduction

2

3

4

5

6

Motivation andRelated Work

ArchitectureOverview

Algorithms

Applications andResults

Conclusion