Emulation system with improved reliability of interconnect and a method for programming such interconnect

摘要

A method and apparatus for redundant communication channels in an emulation system is disclosed. A processor-based emulation system has a plurality of emulation chips on an emulation board. The emulation chips have a plurality of processor clusters. Signals are sent over one or more communication channels between processor clusters, including from a processor cluster on one emulation chip to a processor cluster on another emulation chip. Copies of the same signal may be sent in duplicate over separate communication channels. If a communication channel failure is detected, instruction memory is modified so that a processor cluster's instructions no longer address a first cluster memory location, but instead address a second cluster memory location of a non-failed communication channel. By using redundant communication channels, emulation system interconnect reliability is increased and recompilation of the design under verification may be avoided.