Combination of scan and trace buffers using the mixed-granularity method for efficient signal selection

摘要

Post-silicon debug is the vital part of the modern circuit design methodology. It is the process of eliminating bugs that have escaped from pre-silicon verification phase. One of the major challenges involved in this technique is lack of internal signal visibility. Selecting the internal signals is very difficult because of narrow down the signal path. A potential way to improve the visibility is to combine scan and trace signals. Existing methods are not proficient since they explore most of the dominate signals that fitted into the trace buffer. In order to overcome the drawbacks, this paper proposes a hybrid method called mixed-granularity which comprises both fine-grained and coarse grained architecture and also reduces the computation time.