On the HDL active trace–a new concept of HDL debugging

The debugging is the bottleneck for the design gap of today’s complex HDL design. Base on the design and simulation dumping, this paper proposes two trace methods for signal value changes. Forward tracing reveals the consequential signal value changes and the corresponding active HDL statements of a tracing signal. Backward tracing reveals the source of a signal. Examples of the HDL debugging using the two tracing methods are given.