Automated Debug of Speed Path Failures Using Functional Tests

Debug of at-speed failures using functional tests is a key challenge as part of frequency pushes during post-silicon debug to improve performance of high performance designs, especially microprocessors. In this paper, we present a technique to automate the debug of speed path failures using failing functional tests by extracting information from design-for-debug features and then algorithmically isolating the internal speed-paths that could be the source of the failures. Results from application of the technique during silicon debug on the Intel reg Coretrade i7 quad-core processor is presented.