Tracking Hardware Evolution

Software evolution is the term used to describe the process of developing and updating software systems. Software repositories such as versioning systems and bug tracking systems are used to manage the evolution of software projects. The mining of this information is used to support predictions and improve design and reuse. Integrated circuit development can also benefit from these techniques. Nowadays, both software and hardware development use repositories and bug tracking systems. There are many hardware open source projects such as SUN's OpenSparc and designs at Opencores.org. We propose a methodology to track specific HDL metrics in order to improve design quality. Our results present a case study that correlates HDL metrics and bug proneness of Verilog HDL modules. We also present EyesOn, an open source framework designed to automate historical and complexity metrics tracking of HDL projects.