When it comes to debugging a design testbench organized in object-oriented style with objects, component hierarchies, macros, transactions and so on, it becomes an onerous, tasteless, and thankless task for RTL verification engineers who generally lag in software expertise. Moreover, class-based debugging tools have lagged… Read More
Today, an SoC can have multiple instances of an IP and also instances of many different IPs from different vendors. Every instance of an IP can work in a separate mode and requires a dedicated power arrangement which may only be formalized at the implementation stage. The power intent, if specified earlier, will need to be re-generated… Read More
As design complexity and size is increasing, SoC verification has become one of the most difficult and time consuming tasks in the design closure.UVM (Universal Verification Methodology, an accellera initiative) is one of the best verification methodologies that support common language, coherent strategy, clarity and transparency… Read More
Amid burgeoning complexity of SoC verification with ever increasing hardware, software and firmware content, verification engineers are hard pressed with learning multiple tools, technologies and methodologies and still completing SoC verification with full accuracy in time. The complexity, size and diversity of SoC … Read More
Ad hoc digital design verification approaches ran out of steam at least a decade ago when designs got intractably large to make it feasible to keep track of everything with pen and paper and excel. But analog design has remained largely ad hoc to this day. The designer runs spice, looks at the waveforms that come out and decide whether… Read More
We know there is a big divide between analog and digital design methodologies, level of automation, validation and verification processes, yet they cannot stay without each other because any complete system on a chip (SoC) demands them to be together. And therefore, there are different methodologies on the floor to combine analog… Read More
Last week I went to a lunch and learn at Mentor about their Questa formal product given by Kurt Takara. Like everyone else these days, Questa is packaged as a number of Apps for doing different tasks. Formal verification is different from other EDA tools in that different approaches can be used for different sub-tasks. There are three… Read More
Once upon a time there was a struggle for verification completion of semiconductor designs at gate level. Today, beyond imagination, there is a struggle to verify a design with billions of gates at the RTL level which may never complete. The designs are large SoCs with complex architectures and several constraints of area, performance,… Read More
I spent the morning at Mentor where they announced their new enterprise verification platform. This was a general announcement but was attended by a lot of the international press who were over on a GlobalPress tour (the event that used to take up camp at Chaminade).
But first Wally Rhines spent 30 minutes giving a nice overview of… Read More
