An integrated debugging environment for reprogrammble hardware systems

Abstract

Reprogrammable hardware systems are traditionally very difficult to debug due to their high level of parallelism. In our solution to this problem, features are inserted into the user's design which allow the system to be monitored and updated at runtime. An assortment of logic is added before synthesis to allow variable buffering, assertion checking, and automatic breakpointing. Low-level clock control and access to off-chip storage is managed by a custom hardware operating system. Through the addition of these features, a system can be debugged directly on the hardware, bypassing simulation and reducing iterations through the design flow. Copyright 2005 ACM.