Is Mutation Testing Worth the Effort? Innovation in Verification

Is Mutation Testing Worth the Effort? Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 05-19-2020 at 6:00 am

innovation

Mutation testing is an intriguing idea, but is it useful? Paul Cunningham (GM of Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I continue our series on novel research ideas, here looking at a paper examining the pros and cons of this topic. Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree.

The Innovation

This month’s pick is Which Software Read More


Private Datacenter Safer than the Cloud? Dangerously Wrong.

Private Datacenter Safer than the Cloud? Dangerously Wrong.
by Bernard Murphy on 04-02-2020 at 6:00 am

Cloud Security

The irony around this topic in the middle of the coronavirus scare – when more of us are working remotely through the cloud – is not lost on me. Nevertheless, ingrained beliefs move slowly so it’s still worth shedding further light. There is a tribal wisdom among chip designers that what we do demands much higher security than any other… Read More


A VIP to Accelerate Verification for Hyperscalar Caching

A VIP to Accelerate Verification for Hyperscalar Caching
by Bernard Murphy on 12-18-2019 at 6:00 am

NVMe

Non-volatile memory (NVM) is finding new roles in datacenters, not currently so much in “cold storage” as a replacement for hard disk drives, but definitely in “warm storage”. Warm storage applications target an increasing number of functions requiring access to databases with much lower latency than is possible through paths… Read More


WEBINAR: Eliminating Hybrid Verification Barriers Through Test Suite Synthesis

WEBINAR: Eliminating Hybrid Verification Barriers Through Test Suite Synthesis
by Randy Smith on 07-16-2019 at 10:00 am

 

I’ve been following the evolution of the verification space for a very long time including several stints consulting to formal verification companies. It has always been interesting to me to see how so many diverse verification techniques emerge and been used, but without much unification of the approaches. With the emergence… Read More


Hogan Fireside Chat with Paul Cunningham at ESDA

Hogan Fireside Chat with Paul Cunningham at ESDA
by Bernard Murphy on 04-17-2019 at 7:00 am

If you’re in verification and you don’t know who Paul Cunningham is, this is a guy you need to have on your radar. Paul has risen through the Cadence ranks fast, first in synthesis and now running the verification group, responsible for about a third of Cadence revenue and a hefty percentage of verification tooling in the semiconductor… Read More


Cadence’s Smarter and Faster Verification in the Era of Machine Learning, AI, and Big Data Analytics Panel

Cadence’s Smarter and Faster Verification in the Era of Machine Learning, AI, and Big Data Analytics Panel
by Camille Kokozaki on 07-11-2018 at 12:00 pm

I attended on Monday, June 25, DAC’s Opening Day, a Cadence-sponsored Lunch panel. Ann Steffora Mutschler (Semiconductor Engineering) was the Moderator and the Panelists were Jim Hogan (Vista Ventures), David Lacey (HP Enterprise), Shigeo Oshima (Toshiba Memory Corp), Paul Cunningham (Cadence).… Read More


The 4th Way Beyond Simulation, FPGA Synthesis, and Emulation

The 4th Way Beyond Simulation, FPGA Synthesis, and Emulation
by Camille Kokozaki on 04-06-2018 at 7:00 am

As verification continues to be a key ingredient in successful design implementation, new approaches have been tried to balance cost, time to results and comprehensive analysis in designs that require large patterns in some application like Image Processing. Simulation environments are well proven, and designers tend to … Read More


DVCon 2018 Mentor Graphics and SemiWiki

DVCon 2018 Mentor Graphics and SemiWiki
by Daniel Nenni on 02-19-2018 at 7:00 am

DVCon turns 30 this year which is a very big deal. My oldest child also turns 30 this year which really puts things in perspective looking back at what we have all accomplished during that time. DVCon originally started as a user’s group at the 1988 Design Automation Conference in Anaheim California and the rest as they say is history.… Read More


System Level Formal

System Level Formal
by Bernard Murphy on 01-09-2018 at 7:00 am

Two recently announced vulnerabilities in major processor platforms should remind us that bugs don’t organize themselves to appear only in domains we know how to test comprehensively. Both Meltdown and Spectre (the announced problems) are potential hardware system-level issues allowed by interactions between speculative… Read More


What are you ready to mobilize for FPGA debug?

What are you ready to mobilize for FPGA debug?
by Frederic Leens on 12-04-2017 at 7:00 am

There are 3 common misconceptions about debugging FPGA with the real hardware:

[LIST=1]

  • Debugging happens because the engineers are incompetent.
  • FPGA debugging on hardware ‘wastes’ resources.
  • A single methodology should solve ALL the problems.
  • Read More