1. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
DEV: Design Explorer for
Verification
John Lau Kah Soon, Low Ching Ling
IC Design Department
Altera Corporation
Malaysia

2. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Outline of Presentation
 Introduction
 Motivation and Related Work
 Architecture Overview
 Algorithms (with supporting results)
 Applications and Results
 Conclusion
 Q & A

3. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Pavlidis &
Friedman, 2009
Introduction
 Current & Future Trends
− Increase of complexity
SOC & SOPC
More than Moore (e.g. 3D IC Integration)
− Design cycle shorter
− IP reuse
 Problem Statements
− ASIC designer
− Verification engineer
Back
How can we obtain more visibilityHow can we obtain more visibility
and accessibility with least effort atand accessibility with least effort at
functional level of abstractionfunctional level of abstraction??

4. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Motivation and Related Work
 Motivation
− Google® search engine
− Text data mining
 Related Work
− Zaki & Tahar
Focus on behavioral code visualization.
− Hearst
Text data mining descriptions & applications.
− Assali & Zanghi
Metadata hierarchy for a set of websites.
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5. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Architecture Overview
Back
Design database
analyzer
Design parser
IO metadata
extractor
Structural metadata
extractor
Behavioral
metadata
extractor
Hierarchical path
name generator
Hierarchical graph
generator
Interpreter Graphics engine

6. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Algorithms
Back
Design
HDL
Code Links
IO (Data Flow)
Metadata
Structural
Metadata
DEV
Sequential
search &
modification

7. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Algorithms
Back
DEV
Design
Search result:-
[1] Behavioral Metadata
[2] Hierarchical Graph
[3] Hierarchical Path Name
Search
query
IC Designer
Sequential
search

8. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Supporting Results
Behavioral
Metadata
Analogous to Google®
Search Engine

9. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Algorithms
Back
DEV
Design
Search result:-
[1] Behavioral Metadata
[2] Hierarchical Graph
[3] Hierarchical Path Name
Search
query
IC Designer
Sequential
search

10. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Supporting Results
Hierarchical Graph (Instantiation & Interconnection)
Hierarchical Path Name &
Module Name
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11. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Algorithms
Back
DEV
Search
query
IC Designer
IO (Data Flow)
Metadata
Structural
Metadata
Search
result
Information retrieval
Information retrieval

12. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Supporting Results
Back
Structural Metadata
IO Metadata

13. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Applications and Results
 Applications
− Interfacing with other design flow and simulator.
e.g. tracing root cause(s) of a contention in chip.
− Understanding new or legacy designs
e.g. tracing a signal in ASIC design.
 Results (next page)
Back

14. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Applications and Results
Back
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(Output)
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Waveform
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EVCD
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Waveform
viewing (or)
EVCD
translation
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1

15. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Applications and Results
 Applications
− Interfacing with other design flow and simulator.
e.g. tracing root cause(s) of a contention in chip.
− Understanding new or legacy designs
e.g. tracing a signal in ASIC design.
 Results (next page)
Back

16. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Applications and Results
Tracing mrx_clk_pad_i in Ethernet MAC IP followed by MRxClk
Back

17. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Conclusion
 Foundational introduction
− Search engine in IC design.
 Research and industry roadmap
− Bigger role for search engine in design flow.
 Current advantages
− Time/productivity, memory consumption, and representation
method/flexibility.
 Potential applications
− Derived from search results.
 Future works
− Tool enhancement.
− Optimizing current algorithms.
− Adding support for other HDL.
Back

18. © 2009 Altera Corporation—Public
ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS & STRATIX are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.
and Altera marks in and outside the U.S.
Q & AQ & A
1 Introduction
2
3
4
5
6
Motivation and
Related Work
Architecture
Overview
Algorithms
Applications and
Results
Conclusion