Selfie5: An Autonomous, Self-Contained Verification Approach for High-Throughput Random Testing of Programmable Processors

Random testing plays a crucial role in processor designs, complementing other verification methodologies. This paper introduces Selfie5, an autonomous, self-contained verification approach that utilizes the device under verification (DUV) itself to generate, execute, and verify random sequences. This approach eliminates the overhead associated with testing environment interfaces, resulting in a substantial increase in throughput, a critical aspect for achieving comprehensive coverage. The utility can be deployed to FPGA prototypes, emulation platforms and fabricated ASICs and run at-speed to execute billions of tested scenarios per hour, while ensuring the reproducibility of captured failures in an observable simulation environment. This paper describes the Selfie5 approach, algorithms and utility, while also providing detailed insights into successful deployment of the utility for a RISC-V implementation. When deployed on a 16 nm test SoC featuring a RISC-V processor, Selfie5 delivered a testing throughput of 13.8 billion tested instructions per hour, which is 69× higher than other published works.