Validation Beyond Protocol Exerciser

A prominent semiconductor manufacturer that specializes in the design and production of microcontrollers, microprocessors, and integrated circuits and known for their reliable and high-performance solutions that power numerous embedded systems and devices, were in a look out for a tool to validate I2C and SPI protocol compliance on their silicon chips.

They started with a protocol exerciser available in the market to conduct validation because they felt it would be easy to use, economical and simple to set up hardware. To validate they had to do a series of steps including writing test procedures, building Software on top of the protocol exerciser, executing the tests and creating reports. 

Challenges

- Only 43% of timing parameter tests were covered with the exerciser and custom software setup.

- All parametric sweeps required development of custom software modules. This resulted in spending a substantial amount of effort and time to bring up the validation setup to a certain level.

- The hardware setup was not protocol generic and had to be changed for each protocol validation. Between each protocol, a manual intervention was needed to change the connections. This hindered the complete automation of the test setup.

- Only limited DUT specific tests could be conducted. This was not allowing them to perform DUT specific functional tests.

- Support received from the Protocol Exerciser vendor was inadequate.

SOLUTIONS

- All the expected parameters were supported by Soliton’s out of the box Protocol Validation Solution (PVS). Hence helped them achieve 100% test coverage.

- No custom coding was needed to use Soliton’s out of the box PVS I2C&SPI tools, saving hours of time needed to use protocol exerciser.

- PVS’s Hardware architecture is protocol generic. Hence allowed seamless validation I2C and SPI concurrently. With the automation capabilities, a fully automated workflow was set up.

- PVS tool supported creation of custom DUT specific test scripts, enabling users to conduct DUT specific functional tests.

- The customers were impressed and appreciative of Soliton's Stellar support and onboarding process, which surpassed all their expectations.

USP

Out of box solution

100% test coverage

Protocol agnostic solution

Exceptional support

Solitons Protocol Validation Solutions proved highly valuable for their device protocol validation, significantly saving them time, money, and effort. Within just 4 hours of onboarding, they seamlessly integrated and started using the tool. Our continuous support further aided them in maximizing the tool’s potential, streamlining their validation process effectively.

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