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线花在验证上：创建和管理各种测试，以确保行为符合设计标准，这些设计标准在设计生命周期的不同迭代中被执行和维护。测试驱动开发、持续集成、自动回归、甚至自动测试生成或创建是软件开发中商业和公共利益扩展的副产品，认识到全面和高效的测试为软件部门提供的关键支持。通过该项目和由此产生的产品数字自动化测试创建器(Digital ARC)，我们提议在用于高密度脂蛋白测试的工作流实用程序纲要中开启新的篇章，通过自动化测试创建，并生成人类可读的测试源代码，然后由开发人员进一步维护。我们将专注于统一回归测试，这是已经托管的代码所需的一种测试类型，它通过开发迭代跟踪代码行为的变化，并以跨代码功能的原子单元的行为的不良变化的形式标记错误。我们的工具将设计为根据业务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，并专注于更具创造性、更不容易自动化的任务，这些任务直接受益于人类的独创性。这种类型的工作流(有时称为Shift-Left，以强调将任务降级到自动化实例)在软件(DiffBlue、IntelliTest)中很流行，并且很可能即将打入硬件社区，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.