Post Silicon Validation of Display System & Performance Analysis of Zephyr OS for Intel SoC

Abstract

A decade ago, the major challenges of semiconductor device design were performance and area. Designers used to aim at achieving the required target speed in a minimum chip area as possible. So, this led to designs that were much more complex for analyzing and correcting bugs in them before the manufacturing of SoC. Hence Post Silicon validation became the essential element in the chip design flow. Intel Atom Range processor supports various other subsystems and one of them is Display Subsystem.

Display subsystem is an essential IP that is used to enhance user experience and interaction with SoC. The display system has various components which help in correcting and enhancing image qualities and displaying them with the compatible output format. So, in post-silicon validation for display subsystem test cases are generated and then validated on IP environment and Post Si environment before the arrival of SoC. This stage is known as the post-silicon preparedness phase. After SoC is manufactured all the test scenarios are validated on SoC itself to ensure its functionality, power and performance parameters.

All the various components inside the display system can be from different vendors but are merged together in one place. This merging can create a lot of scenarios where validation is required in the pipeline flow. Also, every type of input and output image formats are validated on the actual SoC. Validation is also done for audio inputs and synchronizing audio and video together. Hence, overall validation of the display test case is performed to check that before SoC is delivered to vendors display subsystems’ s functionality and performance parameters are up to mark.So, the work here covers the basic philosophy behind the need for post-silicon validation. Also, discusses the challenges coming along the way and the procedure involved in generating a test case for validating the display subsystem.

Zephyr OS is a Linux based real-time operating system which is best suited for safety critical applications. So, timing analysis needs to be done in order to check if the safety critical tasks do not get delayed due to any preemptive operating system-based tasks. Such timing analysis would serve as proof of concept that real-time operating systems are more reliable for safety critical jobs compared to normal operating systems.