Low Power Verification · All levels
Supply Network Modeling: Debug Playbook
Debug Playbook for Supply Network Modeling.
Debug playbook
Debug Playbook for Supply Network Modeling is anchored on illegal transition rate, corruption incidence, and deterministic replay quality under low-power scenarios. Convert observations into mechanism-backed and owner-bound actions.
Freeze seed, metadata, and boundary under investigation.
Locate first persistent low-power phase divergence.
Classify mechanism: setup, transition, boundary, retention, or X-prop class.
Apply one focused reproducer and one bounded fix.
Re-run determinism and broader regression matrix.
Review memo template
LPV REVIEW MEMO - Power-Aware Simulation / Supply Network Modeling
1. Symptom
- Failing metric: illegal transition rate, corruption incidence, and deterministic replay quality under low-power scenarios
- Trigger context: <seed/mode/sequence>
- First failing phase: <entry/off/exit/boundary>
2. Mechanism hypothesis
- Candidate mechanism: Model supply nets and supply sets with enough fidelity to reflect real domain dependencies, including shared rails, switched rails, always-on islands, and hierarchical inheritance from top-level supplies into subdomains. Exercise nominal, brownout-like, and transition windows to reveal sequencing bugs that only appear when parent-child supplies move asynchronously. The simulation model should explicitly capture control-to-rail timing assumptions (switch enable, acknowledgment, settle latency) so protocol checks can distinguish valid delay from genuine power-control deadlock or early functional access.
- Competing hypotheses: setup, transition race, boundary bug, retention drift, X-prop noise
- Missing evidence: <trace/assertion/report>
3. Proposed action
- Smallest reversible change: <intent/RTL/checker/flow>
- Expected movement: <failure trend/replay stability>
- Regression risk: compatibility, coverage, signoff delay
4. Signoff
- Required artifact: evidence packet for Supply Network Modeling: transition timeline, assertions, and before-after replay summary
- Required owners: LPV lead, power-intent owner, Power-Aware Simulation owner
- Final decision: ship, bounded rollout, rollback, or escalateLow-power verification deep dive
Power-aware simulation quality is measured by realistic transition behavior and actionable failure classification.
Concept diagram
POWER-AWARE SIM FLOW
UPF + RTL + testbench -> elaboration -> transition simulation -> assertions and triageMetric graph
SIM QUALITY SIGNALS
false-fail noise █████
actionable failures ███████
deterministic replay ████████Metrics and artifacts to collect
elaboration semantic report
power-aware run reproducibility matrix
corruption and clamp behavior summary
assertion signal-to-noise trend
Mini case study
A noisy regression became actionable after bucketing failures by transition phase and boundary type before fixing checks.
Debug branches
Start from first failing phase, not final mismatch.
Check semantic setup consistency before declaring design bug.
Use one reproducible scenario per hypothesis branch.
Senior review question
Ask: what exact low-power transition boundary failed first, and which artifact proves the closure claim reproducibly?
Key takeaways
Tie each LPV claim to a concrete transition boundary and one proving artifact.
Prefer minimal reversible fixes with explicit owner and rollback criteria.
Common pitfalls
Treating power-aware failures as random before boundary classification.
Waiving X-prop failures before proving impact and root cause.
Declaring closure without deterministic replay across key modes.
Debug ladder
Sequence: reproduce -> classify -> isolate boundary -> prove mechanism -> bounded fix.
Avoid mixed fixes before first-principles classification.