MISE, Machine for In-System Evaluation of custom VLSI chips

The ultimate goal of any custom chip must be its effective use in a complete system. Integrating a chip into a system is usually a nontrivial task, especially for small research teams that do not have extensive hardware and software support As a result, chips designed by universities and research laboratories are seldom evaluated beyond functional checking in isolation. In-system evaluation, namely the evaluation of chips in a realistic application system, is a crucial step in the development of a chip—without it, the impact of the custom chip on a system cannot be demonstrated adequately. Unfortunately, in-system evaluation has often been regarded (mistakenly) as a "tedious but simple" interfacing problem. This paper identifies some of the key research problems that one encounters in specifying, designing, testing and demonstrating a custom chip in relation to the application system in which it will be used, and proposes a system called MISE (Machine For In-System Evaluation) to be a solution to the issues raised.