Software workarounds for hardware errors by instruction patch synthesis
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Liu, Tsung-Po
Abstract
Due to the ever-increasing complexity of system design, it becomes not uncommon for some design error escaping all verification efforts and settling in final silicon realization. As hardware-based fixing is much more expensive than software-based fixing and manual software-based fixing can be error prone, this thesis proposes a methodology generating software workarounds for erroneous microprocessor designs. The workarounds can be directly applied to assembly code and do not need to modify compiler.This advantage can
help the design flow more smooth and no need to iteratively
redesign the compiler.
In this thesis a generic formulation is introduced based on Skolem and Herbrand function extraction from quantified Boolean formula (QBF) solving; reduction techniques are devised to further enhance practicality. Thereby a program can be recompiled at the assembly code level for correct execution on a buggy microprocessor. Experimental results
show the feasibility of the proposed method.
Subjects
design error
patch synthesis
QBF
software workaround
Skolem function
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-101-R99943093-1.pdf
Size
23.32 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):99c5efb81aad5ddbe0a32923011ef7c1