Principles Of Functional Verification

As design complexity in chips and devices continues to rise, so, too, does the demand for functional verification. Principles of Functional Verification is a hands-on, practical text that will help train professionals in the field of engineering on the methodology and approaches to verification. In practice, the architectural intent of a device is necessarily abstract. The implementation process, however, must define the detailed mechanisms to achieve the architectural goals. Based on a decade of experience, Principles of Functional Verification intends to pinpoint the issues, provide strategies to solve the issues, and present practical applications for narrowing the gap between architectural intent and implementation. The book is divided into three parts, each building upon the chapters within the previous part. Part One addresses why functional verification is necessary, its definition and goals. In Part Two, the heart of the methodology and approaches to solving verification issues are examined. Each chapter in this part ends with exercises to apply what was discussed in the chapter. Part Three looks at practical applications, discussing project planning, resource requirements, and costs. Each chapter throughout all three parts will open with Key Objectives, focal points the reader can expect to review in the chapter. * Takes a "holistic" approach to verification issues * Approach is not restricted to one language * Discussed the verification process, not just how to use the verification language

Effective Functional Verification is organized into 4 parts. The first part contains 3 chapters designed appeal to newcomers and experienced people to the field. There is a survey of various verification methodologies and a discussion of them. The second part with 3 chapters is targeted towards people in management and higher up on the experience ladders. New verification engineers reading these chapters learn what is expected and how things work in verification. Some case studies are also presented with analysis of proposed improvements. The last two parts are the result of experience of several years. It goes into how to optimize a verification plan and an environment and how to get results effectively. Various subjects are discussed here to get the most out of a verification environment. Lastely, the appendix discusses some tool specifics to help remove repetitive work and also some tool specific guidelines. While reading Effective Functional Verification, one will be able to get a jump start on planning and executing a verification plan using the concepts presented.

Effective Functional Verification is organized into 4 parts. The first part contains 3 chapters designed appeal to newcomers and experienced people to the field. There is a survey of various verification methodologies and a discussion of them. The second part with 3 chapters is targeted towards people in management and higher up on the experience ladders. New verification engineers reading these chapters learn what is expected and how things work in verification. Some case studies are also presented with analysis of proposed improvements. The last two parts are the result of experience of several years. It goes into how to optimize a verification plan and an environment and how to get results effectively. Various subjects are discussed here to get the most out of a verification environment. Lastely, the appendix discusses some tool specifics to help remove repetitive work and also some tool specific guidelines. While reading Effective Functional Verification, one will be able to get a jump start on planning and executing a verification plan using the concepts presented.

System designers, computer scientists and engineers have c- tinuously invented and employed notations for modeling, speci- ing, simulating, documenting, communicating, teaching, verifying and controlling the designs of digital systems. Initially these s- tems were represented via electronic and fabrication details. F- lowing C. E. Shannon’s revelation of 1948, logic diagrams and Boolean equations were used to represent digital systems in a fa- ion that de-emphasized electronic and fabrication detail while revealing logical behavior. A small number of circuits were made available to remove the abstraction of these representations when it was desirable to do so. As system complexity grew, block diagrams, timing charts, sequence charts, and other graphic and symbolic notations were found to be useful in summarizing the gross features of a system and describing how it operated. In addition, it always seemed necessary or appropriate to augment these documents with lengthy verbal descriptions in a natural language. While each notation was, and still is, a perfectly valid means of expressing a design, lack of standardization, conciseness, and f- mal definitions interfered with communication and the understa- ing between groups of people using different notations. This problem was recognized early and formal languages began to evolve in the 1950s when I. S. Reed discovered that flip-flop input equations were equivalent to a register transfer equation, and that xvi tor-like notation. Expanding these concepts Reed developed a no- tion that became known as a Register Transfer Language (RTL).

A key strength of this book is that it describes the entire verification cycle and details each stage. The organization of the book follows the cycle, demonstrating how functional verification engages all aspects of the overall design effort and how individual cycle stages relate to the larger design process. Throughout the text, the authors leverage their 35 plus years experience in functional verification, providing examples and case studies, and focusing on the skills, methods, and tools needed to complete each verification task. Additionally, the major vendors (Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design Systems, Verisity, and Synopsys) have implemented key examples from the text and made these available on line, so that the reader can test out the methods described in the text.

The Integrated Circuit (IC) industry has gone without a standardized verification approach for decades. This book defines a uniform, standardizable methodology for verifying the logical behavior of an integrated circuit, whether an I/O controller, a microprocessor, or a complete digital system. This book will help Engineers and managers responsible for IC development to bring a single, standards-based methodology to their R & D efforts, cutting costs and improving results.

Functional verification is an art as much as a science. It requires not only creativity and cunning, but also a clear methodology to approach the problem. The Open Verification Methodology (OVM) is a leading-edge methodology for verifying designs at multiple levels of abstraction. It brings together ideas from electrical, systems, and software engineering to provide a complete methodology for verifying large scale System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. OVM defines an approach for developing testbench architectures so they are modular, configurable, and reusable. This book is designed to help both novice and experienced verification engineers master the OVM through extensive examples. It describes basic verification principles and explains the essentials of transaction-level modeling (TLM). It leads readers from a simple connection of a producer and a consumer through complete self-checking testbenches. It explains construction techniques for building configurable, reusable testbench components and how to use TLM to communicate between them. Elements such as agents and sequences are explained in detail.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 7th International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2011, held in Haifa, Israel in December 2011. The 15 revised full papers presented together with 3 tool papers and 4 posters were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on synthesis, formal verification, software quality, testing and coverage, experience and tools, and posters- student event.