METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR TESTING MICROARCHITECTURAL PARTICULARITIES USING MICROCODE WRITTEN TESTS

摘要

The invention relates to an apparatus (10) for testing a computer microarchitecture comprising a reprogrammable microcode memory (40), which comprises: a microcode linked to one or more macroinstructions (11), and a reprogrammed test microcode to test the computer microarchitecture. It is characterized in that the reprogrammed test microcode comprises a sequence of microinstructions (41i) executed to test the computer microarchitecture. It may further comprise a splitter (50) which receives the microinstruction sequence and sends outputs (51i); and execution units (61i) that receive the outputs and perform microinstructions. The computer microarchitecture is preferably capable of supporting multiple sets of instructions. The invention also relates to a corresponding method and test method in which a macroinstruction is applied to a particular sequence of microinstructions; and the particular sequence of microinstructions is replaced by an arbitrary set of microinstructions that includes the test. / P