Online CPU test for superscalar processors

摘要

The invention relates to a method for testing a superscalar CPU (=central processing unit) of a computer system,
wherein the testing is done during startup (11) of the computer system and/or online during operation of the computer system, characterized in that the testing comprises a pseudo random testing procedure (1-8), wherein pseudo random test instructions and pseudo random test data are fed to the superscalar CPU (4a, 4b), and wherein an output data signature of the superscalar CPU is compared to a reference data signature (7). The invention provides a testing method for a superscalar CPU of a computer system that can be applied with basically every superscalar CPU, in particular even if detailed information about internal design and implementation of CPU hardware is not available.