Patchability-Driven Design Exploration for System-on-Chip Patching Architectures

As System-on-Chip (SoC) designs become increasingly complex, ensuring comprehensive verification has become more challenging, leading to overlooked hardware bugs that can be found in the field. Addressing hardware bugs post-deployment is difficult, as they typically cannot be easily fixed like software bugs. To tackle this issue, hardware-based patching mechanisms have emerged as a potential solution for providing in-field fixes. However, the lack of a standardized method to evaluate the ”patchability” of different designs complicates the integration of patching infrastructure into SoCs. In this article, we propose a fully parameterized Patch Support Block (PSB) architecture that can be tailored for various hardware designs, enabling post-deployment patching. We introduce a novel patchability score formulation that provides a quantifiable metric for evaluating the effectiveness of patching designs. Our approach considers both the observability and controllability of the patching hardware and provides a framework for system integrators to maximize patchability while managing resource constraints. Through experimentation with multiple design configurations, we demonstrate how our methodology can enhance patchability in hardware systems and provide security-related fixes for SoCs in real-world scenarios.