Abstract: A method, apparatus, and product for partial instruction-by-instruction checking on acceleration platforms. The method comprising: obtaining a trace from an hardware accelerator, wherein the trace is generated by the hardware accelerator during simulation of an execution of a test case on a circuit design; identifying a synchronization point in the trace; simulating execution of the test case by a reference model until reaching the synchronization point; and performing instruction-by-instruction checking in order to identify an error in the circuit design based on the simulated execution by the hardware accelerator, wherein the instruction-by-instruction checking is performed with respect to a portion of the trace that relates to operation after executing the synchronization point, wherein the instruction-by-instruction checking utilizes the reference model to determine an expected outcome of each event recorded in the portion of the trace.