Innovative high speed serial controller testing

A method in a functional semiconductor device, the method comprising:

• originating a transaction from a transaction originator of the functional semiconductor device;
• issuing the transaction onto a device fabric of the functional semiconductor device from the transaction originator, the issued transaction being directed toward a serial Input/Output interface (serial IO interface) of the functional semiconductor device by the transaction originator;
• receiving the transaction at the serial IO interface via a virtualized device logic embedded within the serial IO interface of the functional semiconductor device;
• modifying the transaction received at the virtualized device logic to form a modified transaction;
• issuing the modified transaction onto a device fabric of the functional semiconductor device from the serial IO interface;
• and
• returning the modified transaction to the transaction originator.

A system comprising:

• a CPU core module (processor) and a memory to execute instructions;
• a printed circuit board (PCB) motherboard having the memory mounted thereupon;
• and
• a functional semiconductor device mounted to the PCB motherboard, the functional semiconductor device comprising:
• (i) the processor;
• (ii) a serial Input/Output interface (serial IO interface);
• (iii) a device fabric to carry transactions between a plurality of components of the functional semiconductor device;
• (iv) virtualized device logic embedded within the serial IO interface;
• and
• (v) a transaction originator to originate a transaction and issue the transaction onto the device fabric directed toward the serial IO interface;
• wherein the virtualized device logic is to receive the transaction at the serial IO interface via the device fabric, wherein the virtualized device logic is to modify the transaction received to form a modified transaction, wherein the virtualized device logic is to issue the modified transaction onto the device fabric, and wherein the modified transaction is returned to the transaction originator.