An ISA-like Accelerator Abstraction. Innovation in Verification

An ISA-like Accelerator Abstraction. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 09-29-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

A processor ISA provides an abstraction against which to verify an implementation. We look here at a paper extending this concept to accelerators, for verification of how these interact with processors and software. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys… Read More


Side Channel Analysis at RTL. Innovation in Verification

Side Channel Analysis at RTL. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 08-26-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

Roots of trust can’t prevent attacks through side-channels which monitor total power consumption or execution timing. Correcting weakness to such attacks requires pre-silicon vulnerability analysis. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO)… Read More


Instrumenting Post-Silicon Validation. Innovation in Verification

Instrumenting Post-Silicon Validation. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 07-28-2021 at 6:00 am

Instrumenting Post-Silicon Validation

Instrumenting post-silicon validation is not a new idea but here’s a twist. Using (pre-silicon) emulation to choose debug observation structures to instrument in-silicon. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO) and I continue our series on research… Read More


Neural Nets and CR Testing. Innovation in Verification

Neural Nets and CR Testing. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 06-29-2021 at 10:00 am

Instrumenting Post-Silicon Validation

Leveraging neural nets and CR testing isn’t as simple as we first thought. But is that the last word in combining these two techniques? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.… Read More


Fuzzing to Validate SoC Security. Innovation in Verification

Fuzzing to Validate SoC Security. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 05-26-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation image 2021 min

Fuzzing is to software verification what randomization is hardware verification. Can a fuzzing approach improve hardware security testing? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback… Read More


Agile and Verification, Validation. Innovation in Verification

Agile and Verification, Validation. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 04-27-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation image 2021

Agile methods in hardware design are becoming topical again. What does this mean for verification? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence) and I continue our series on research ideas. We’re also honored this month to welcome Raúl Camposano to our blog as a very distinguished replacement for Jim Hogan. As always, feedback… Read More


Cadence Underlines Verification Throughput at DVCon

Cadence Underlines Verification Throughput at DVCon
by Bernard Murphy on 03-10-2021 at 6:00 am

Verification Throughput min

Paul Cunningham, CVP and GM of the System Verification Group at Cadence gave the afternoon Keynote on Tuesday at DVCon and doubled down on his verification-throughput message. At the end of the day, what matters most to us in verification is the number of bugs found and fixed per dollar per day. You can’t really argue with that message.… Read More


Finding Large Coverage Holes. Innovation in Verification

Finding Large Coverage Holes. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 02-24-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation image 2021 min

Is it possible to find and prioritize holes in coverage through AI-based analytics on coverage data? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.

The Innovation

This month’s pick is Using Machine Learning Clustering To Find Large Coverage Read More


2020 Retrospective. Innovation in Verification

2020 Retrospective. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 01-20-2021 at 6:00 am

innovation min

Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I launched our series on Innovation in Verification at the beginning of last year. We wanted to explore basic innovations and new directions researchers are taking for hardware and system verification. Even we were surprised to find how rich a seam we had tapped. We plan… Read More


More on Bug Localization. Innovation in Verification

More on Bug Localization. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 12-15-2020 at 6:00 am

innovation min

Mining assertions from constrained random simulations to localize bugs. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I continue our series on research ideas. Feel free to comment.

The Innovation

This month’s pick is Symptomatic bug localization for functional debug of hardware designs. This paper was presented… Read More