Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Conferences, Workshops, Symposiums, and Seminars
  4. FudgeFactor: Syntax-Guided Synthesis for Accurate RTL Error Localization and Correction
 
conference paper

FudgeFactor: Syntax-Guided Synthesis for Accurate RTL Error Localization and Correction

Becker, Andrew James  
•
Maksimovic, Djordje
•
Novo Bruna, David  
Show more
2015
Hardware and Software: Verification and Testing
11th International Haifa Verification Conference (HVC 2015)

Functional verification occupies a significant amount of the digital circuit design cycle. In this paper, we present a novel approach to improve circuit debugging which not only localizes errors with high confidence, but can also provide semantically-meaningful source code corrections. Our method, which we call FUDGEFACTOR, starts with a buggy design, at least one failing and several correct test vectors, and a list of suspect bug locations. We obtain the suspect location from a state-of-the-art debugging tool that includes a significant number of false positives. Using this list and a library of rules empirically characterizing typical source-code mistakes, we instrument the buggy design to allow each potential error location to either be left unchanged, or replaced with a set of possible corrections. FUDGEFACTOR then combines the instrumented design with the test vectors and solves a 2QBF-SAT problem to find the minimum number of source-level changes from the original code which correct the bug. Our 13 benchmarks demonstrate that our method is able to correct a sizable portion of realistic bugs within a reasonable computational time. With the aid of available golden reference designs, we show that those corrections are, at least on these benchmarks, always valid and non-trivial fixes. We believe that our technique significantly improves over other debugging tools in two respects: When we succeed, we obtain a much more precise bug localization with no false positives and little or no ambiguity. Additionally, we offer bug corrections that are inherently meaningful to the designers and enable designers to quickly recognize and understand the root cause of the bug with a high level of confidence.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-26287-1_16
Author(s)
Becker, Andrew James  
Maksimovic, Djordje
Novo Bruna, David  
Ewaida, Mohsen A A  
Veneris, Andreas
Jobstmann, Barbara
Ienne, Paolo  
Date Issued

2015

Publisher

Springer

Published in
Hardware and Software: Verification and Testing
ISBN of the book

978-3-319262-87-1

Series title/Series vol.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 9434

Start page

259

End page

275

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LAP  
Event nameEvent placeEvent date
11th International Haifa Verification Conference (HVC 2015)

Haifa, Israel

November 17-19, 2015

Available on Infoscience
January 20, 2023
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/194147
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés