SoC (System on Chip): Automation and Testing

Abstract

Broadcom SoC is designed for Embedded Linux Platform, which is targeted for Business Gateways and Home Routers. BRCM-SoC (System on Chip) basically includes many peripherals connected across the ARM core. ARM core is easily available in the market, but Broadcom does not give just the ARM core, it also gives the peripherals embedded across the ARM core. The peripheral software is designed by BRCM unit. Our work in this thesis report is to develop testing methodology for these peripheral software(drivers). The software testing begins by booting the Universal Bootloader onto the board along with the Kernel image. If this works fine stressing is done on the Build in order to check whether the build is able to withstand the stress .After which testing of various IO peripherals softwares such as Kernel features , Ethernet, USB(Universal Serial Bus), SATA (Serial Advanced Technol- ogy Attachment), PCIe(Peripheral Component Interconnect express), eMMC(Embedded Multimedia Controller ), etc is done. These testing is done manually. For ease of the work and also to reduce the testing time automation using python scripts for each features is done. These automation setup are made to run overnight for stress kind of testing. Any failure or unsatisfactory failures are identified and bugs are reported by raising JIRA. JIRA is one kind of software which is use to report the bug. Based on this report corrective measures are taken at development stage and the cycle is repeated for re-verifications. This process goes on until the problem is resolved gracefully. At the end when all the functionality including specific features as demanded by customers are working fine the build is declared passed.