Validating Families of Latency Insensitive Protocols

Abstract

With increasing clock frequencies, the signal delay on some interconnects in a System on Chip (SoC) often exceeds the clock period, which necessitates latency insensitive protocols (LIPs). The correctness of a system composed of synchronous blocks communicating via LIPs is established by showing latency equivalence between a completely synchronous composition of the blocks, and the LIP-based composition. Every time a new LIP is conceived, it needs to be debugged and then proven correct. Mathematical theorems to establish correctness, though elegant, are error prone, and tedious to create for every new variant of LIPs. In this work, we present validation frameworks for families of LIPs, both for dynamic validation, useful for early debug cycles, and formal verification for formal proof of correctness. This can be a useful framework in the hands of designers trying to create new LIPs or to optimize existing ones for design convergence.