Interconnection fabric design for tracing signals in post-silicon validation

Abstract

Post-silicon validation has become an essential step in the design flow of today's complex integrated circuits. One effective technique that provides real-time visibility to the circuit under debug (CUD) is to monitor and trace internal signals during its normal operation. Typically, a large number of signals are tapped and a subset of them are selected to be observed in each debug process. These trace signals need to be transferred to on-chip buffers and/or off-chip trace ports for analysis. Existing solutions use multiplexer trees or specific access networks to conduct the above duty, which, however, either provide less visibility to the CUD or result in high hardware cost. In this paper, we propose a novel trace signal interconnection fabric design to tackle the above problem. Experimental results on benchmark circuits show the efficacy of the proposed solution.