Track Down HW Function Faults Using Real SW Invariants

System level functional verification by running real software stack on FPGA prototype is essential for achieving a high quality design. But it is hard to find the exact source of hardware function faults while running large closed source system software fails. This paper proposes the idea of tracking down faults through real system software control flow invariants with current trace output hardware support. It captures qualified control flow invariant trace in reference execution and test trace; and tracks down faults through comparing offline invariant trace and test trace. The approach can deal with both deterministic and nondeterministic execution. We implemented the proof of concept in full system simulator Bochs. Our experimentation with the real closed source MS Windows XP suggests that the approach is effective in tracking down hardware function faults.