DUTCTL: A Flexible Open-Source Framework for Rapid Bring-Up, Characterization, and Remote Operation of Custom-Silicon RISC-V SoCs

Automatic test equipment (ATE) systems are industry-standard tools to test and characterize silicon at high resolution and volume. With open-source hardware initiatives on the rise, small organizations and research groups increasingly design their own prototype systems-on-chip (SoCs), but often struggle to acquire and maintain ATE. Thanks to RISC-V's Debug Module (DM), SoCs can control and observe their own state using standardized interfaces which can be driven through commodity adapters. However, this on-chip controllability and observability by itself is insufficient to replace ATE for functional tests and silicon characterization; it lacks coordination and automation of clocks, resets, power supplies, and debugging. We present DUTCTL, an open-source framework automating the bring-up and characterization of RISC-V-based SoCs by coordinating internal and external resources without an ATE. We evaluate our approach by bringing up an open-source 64-bit Linux-capable RISC-V SoC and characterizing its performance, speed, and power consumption.