Cost Effective Hostless System for Add-In-Card (AIC) Post-Silicon Electrical Validation
Hooi Leong Lim, Adrian Kang Mouk Pio, Jo En Kang, Bridget Chia Mei Tham · 2024
Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) post silicon validation is executed on reference board in PCIe Add-In Card form factor via PCIe x16 edge gold finger. The GPU reference board is designed to assemble on a Client or Server board via PCIEx16 interface which will be similar to actual product form factor. Hence in the current validation environment, the test setup is usually space consuming and incurs higher station setup cost as it requires a Client or Server board pairing to power up the small GPU card. The innovation here is a hostless concept for GPU card coupled with a custom-design PCIe adaptor board with x16 connector and necessary voltage and clock requirements of the PCIe edge finger. ATX Power Supply connects to adaptor board and 100MHz clock supply from Clock integrated chip as RefCLK. With voltage supply and clock, GPU intellectual property (IP) block can power up via running bootscript through eXtended Debug Port (XDP) on JTAG to access GPU and its IP block registry. GPU reference board connects to PCIe x16 connector on adaptor board. ATX Power supply connects to PCIe adaptor board and turns power on. Setup connection is simple and eliminates host board, provides flexibility in standalone setup, cost effective and power on the GPU for specific GPU IP validation and GPU debug, except PCIe IP validation which need PCIe host communication. This replaces 60% of host system in conventional test setup per program, resulting in savings of USD2K per setup, USD20K per program. Setup connection is simple, saves workbench space by 50%.