A web service for automated IP/SoC verification using computers on network

In this paper, we present Automatic Network-based Testing Service (ANTS), a web service to verify functionality of a semiconductor intellectual property (IP) core or a system-on-a-chip (SoC), using computers attached to network. ANTS system performs automated regression testing of IP/SoC cores whenever design change has been made. ANTS system manages a lot of computers and FPGA prototyping boards in computing farm or in an office. FPGA boards are initialized by ANTS automatically. Engineers use web browsers to control ANTS and to see the test results on the fly. We provide users with a skeleton code generator so that they can easily make their own verification projects/applications working on ANTS. One of automated tests with 25 ANTS computers becomes 100 times faster than manual execution of a single C-Model.