Co-Emulation of Scan-Chain Based Designs Utilizing SCE-MI Infrastructure

TL;DR

This paper introduces a methodology using SCE-MI and FPGA emulation to significantly reduce scan-chain verification time for large SoC designs, enabling faster testing and development.

Contribution

It presents a novel high-level testbench and hardware transactor models for scan-chain verification, achieving 82% faster results than RTL simulation.

Findings

82% faster than RTL simulation

Emulation runs in the MHz range, enabling software integration

Facilitates testing of complex DFT methods on large systems

Abstract

As the complexity of the scan algorithm is dependent on the number of design registers, large SoC scan designs can no longer be verified in RTL simulation unless partitioned into smaller sub-blocks. This paper proposes a methodology to decrease scan-chain verification time utilizing SCE-MI, a widely used communication protocol for emulation, and an FPGA-based emulation platform. A high-level (SystemC) testbench and FPGA synthesizable hardware transactor models are developed for the scan-chain ISCAS89 S400 benchmark circuit for high-speed communication between the host CPU workstation and the FPGA emulator. The emulation results are compared to other verification methodologies (RTL Simulation, Simulation Acceleration, and Transaction-based emulation), and found to be 82% faster than regular RTL simulation. In addition, the emulation runs in the MHz speed range, allowing the incorporation of software applications, drivers, and operating systems, as opposed to the Hz range in RTL simulation or sub-megahertz range as accomplished in transaction-based emulation. In addition, the integration of scan testing and acceleration/emulation platforms allows more complex DFT methods to be developed and tested on a large scale system, decreasing the time to market for products.