Mutation based Feature Localization

Abstract

The complexity of modern chip designs is rapidly increasing. More and more blocks from old designs are reused and third party IP is licensed to fulfill strict time-to-market constraints. Often, poor documentation of such blocks makes improvements and extensions of the blocks a difficult time consuming task. In this paper we present a technique for automatically localizing the parts of the code which are relevant for a feature. With this a developer can better understand the design and, consequently, can adjust the design more efficiently. The presented approach uses mutants changing the code of the design at a certain location. The code changed by a mutant is considered to be related to a feature if the mutant is killed while the feature is used. The use cases are generated using an automatic approach. This approach is based on a description specifying how the different features are used. Compared to two previous approaches the manual work is significantly reduced and the localization is of similar or even better quality.