MicroTESK: An Extendable Framework for Test Program Generation

Abstract

Abstract-Creation of test programs and analysis of their execution is the main approach to system-level verification of microprocessors. A lot of techniques have been proposed to automate test program generation, ranging from completely random to well directed ones. However, no "silver bullet" has been found. In good industrial practices, various methods are combined complementing each other. Unfortunately, there is no solution that could integrate all (or at least most) of the techniques in a single framework. Engineers are forced to use a number of tools, which leads to the following problems: (1) it is required to maintain duplicating data (each tool uses its own representation of the target design); (2) to be used together, tools need to be integrated (engineers have to deal with different formats and interfaces). This paper proposes a concept of an extendable framework (MicroTESK) that follows a unified methodology for defining test program generation techniques. The framework supports random and combinatorial generation and (what is even more important) can be easily extended with new techniques being implemented as the framework's plugins.

A Generic Knowledgebase for Test Generation

“…To start with, it should be said that our team works in the area of hardware verification [1,2]. Therefore, the main focus of the research is on generating tests for hardware devices.…”

“…In fact, this could be improved as constraints for similar verification tasks tend to share common parts. The next step in the evolution of approaches to test generation is model-based generation [1,2,3]. It implies separation of knowledge of the verified system's configuration from knowledge of test generation techniques.…”

“…The knowledgebase is being developed at ISPRAS to be used in projects dedicated to hardware verification [1,2].…”