AI-driven automatic regression creation for digital IC design

在现代数字硬件设计中，硬件描述语言被用来表示数字电路的行为。这种抽象表示是设计的核心，其正确性和可维护性至关重要。因此，工程师通常将几乎一半的设计过程时间花在验证上：创建和管理各种测试，以确保行为符合设计标准，这些标准本身在设计生命周期中的各种迭代中被强制执行和维护。测试驱动的开发、持续集成、自动化回归，甚至自动化的测试生成或创建，都是软件开发中业务和公共利益扩展的副产品，这是对全面而有效的测试为软件部门提供的关键支持的认可。通过这个项目和最终的产品Digital Automated Test Creator (Digital ARC)，我们建议通过自动化测试创建和生成可被开发人员进一步维护的可读测试源代码，为HDL测试的工作流实用程序纲要打开一个新的篇章。我们将专注于统一回归测试，这是一种已经管理的代码所需要的测试类型，它通过开发迭代跟踪代码行为的变化，并以跨代码功能原子单元的不受欢迎的行为变化的形式标记出错误。我们的工具将被设计为根据业务kpi实现灵活的覆盖率，同时将工程师从编写回归测试的机械任务中解放出来，并专注于更有创造性的、更不容易自动化的任务，这些任务直接受益于人类的聪明才智。这种类型的工作流（有时表示为左移，以强调将任务转移到自动化实例中）在软件（Diffblue, IntelliTest）中很流行，并且很可能即将进入硬件社区，这为我们的项目创造了强大的商业机会。

In modern digital hardware design, hardware description languages are used to represent the behaviour of digital circuits. This abstract representation is at the core of the design, and its correctness and maintainability are paramount. Therefore, engineers typically spend almost a half of the design process timeline in verification: the creation and curation of various tests meant to ensure that behaviour corresponds to design standards which are themselves enforced and maintained across various iterations in the lifetime of the design.Test driven development, continuous integration, automated regression and even automated test generation or creation are by-products of the expansion of business and public interest in software development, in recognition of the critical support that comprehensive and efficient testing provides to the software sector.Through this project and the resulting product Digital Automated Test Creator (Digital ARC), we propose to open a new chapter in the workflow utilities compendium for HDL testing, by both automating test creation, and generating human-readable test source code which can then be further maintained by developers. We will focus on unite regression testing, a type of testing required for already managed code, which keeps track of changes in code behaviour through development iterations and flags out bugs in the form of undesirable changes in behaviour across atomic units of code functionality.Our tool will be designed to achieve flexible coverage rates according to business KPIs, all the while releasing engineers from the mechanical task of writing regression tests, and focusing on more creative, less easily automated tasks that benefit directly from human ingenuity. This type of workflow (sometimes denotes as shift-left, to emphasize the relegation of tasks to an automated instance) is popular in software (Diffblue, IntelliTest) and is likely on the verge of breaking into the hardware community, which creates strong business opportunity for our project.