Microprocessor silicon debug based on failure propagation tracing

As the complexity of microprocessors increases, the design and bring-up times have significantly increased, negatively impacting the time-to-market (TTM) requirements. In this paper, a backtracing methodology for identifying the root cause of functional failures on the UltraSPARCtrade family of processors is presented. Data provided by a scan dump analysis methodology is linked not only to the design database but also to the failing test in order to isolate one or several candidates for further analysis