Overview

Achim D. Brucker is a co-author of the technical paper "Test Program Generation for a Microprocessor: A Case-Study". In the paper's author listing, Brucker is affiliated with SAP AG, located at Vincenz-Priessnitz-Str. 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany, and is listed with the email address achim.brucker@sap.com.

Authored work

Test Program Generation for a Microprocessor: A Case-Study

Brucker co-authored the paper with Abderrahmane Feliachi, Yakoub Nemouchi, and Burkhart Wolff. The paper addresses certification-related testing for microprocessors by presenting a case study that uses a formal model of a microprocessor to generate test programs. These generated programs are intended to validate that a microprocessor correctly implements its specified instruction set.

The work is situated in the context of certification for critical security and safety properties. The paper notes that reaching Common Criteria EAL 7 requires both formal verification of specification properties and thorough implementation testing, including tests of the hardware platform used in a proof architecture.

Technical context

The case study described in the paper builds on an existing model developed in Isabelle/HOL together with an operating system. The authors use HOL-TestGen, described as a model-based testing environment and an extension of Isabelle/HOL. The paper reports the development of several conformance test scenarios in which processor models were used to synthesize test programs that were run against real hardware in the loop.

The paper further frames test program generation as a technique for validating processor designs at the instruction-set or assembly level. This makes it relevant for commercial off-the-shelf processors where implementation details are usually not available.