In contrast, post-silicon validation tests occur on actual devices running at-speed in commercial, real-world system boards using logic analyzer and assertion-based tools.
FPGA-based emulators, a well-established part of most implementation techniques, are faster than software simulators but will not deliver the comprehensive at-system-speed tests needed for device reliability.
This trend is for the most part due to the increasing complexity of digital systems, which limits the verification coverage provided by traditional pre-silicon methodologies.
As a result, a number of functional bugs survive into manufactured silicon, and it is the job of post-silicon validation to detect and diagnose them so that they do not escape into the released system.
At the same time, it poses several challenges to traditional validation methodologies, because of the limited internal observability and difficulty of applying modifications to manufactured silicon chips.