Verification of the cell broadband engine™ processor

Abstract

Successfully developing an implementation of entirely new chip architecture such as the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) processor from scratch is a notable achievement.Consider further the design complexity (234 million transistors) and the project management complexity (5 participating companies, work in 5 different time zones), and the task seems quite challenging.This paper describes how the central verification team staffed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), Toshiba Corporation, and IBM, produced on first silicon a Cell BE microprocessor functional enough to boot an operating system and run applications.