How To Handle Concurrency


The evolution of processing architectures has solved many problems within a chip, but for each problem solved another one was created. Concurrency is one of those issues, and it has been getting much more attention lately. While concurrency is hardly a new problem, the complexity of today’s systems is making it increasingly difficult to properly design, implement and verify the software an... » read more

Verification Unification


Semiconductor Engineering brought together industry luminaries to initiate the discussion about the role that formal technologies will play with Portable Stimulus and how it may help to bring the two execution technologies closer together. Participating in this roundtable are Joe Hupcey, verification product technologist for [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor, a Siemens Business"]; Tom Fitzpa... » read more

Rediscovering Coverage Insurance


When coverage comes up in conversation, if it comes up at all, it’s always a matter of car, home or health insurance. Coverage and functional verification are unlikely to be used in that discussion, or any other for that matter. That’s too bad because engineering groups grapple with when is enough verification enough, like some kind of coverage insurance. Oh sure, simulation and emulatio... » read more

Why Auto Designs Take So Long


Designing chips for the automotive market is adding significant overhead, particularly for chips with stringent safety requirements. On the verification side it could result in an additional 6 to 12 months of work. On the design side, developing the same processor in the mobile market would take 6 fewer man months. And when it comes to complex electronic control units (ECUs) or [getkc id="81... » read more

Formal’s Roadmap


Formal verification has come a long way in the past five years as it focused on narrow tasks within the verification flow. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss that progress, and the future of formal technologies, with [getperson id="11306" comment="Raik Brinkmann"], president and CEO of [getentity id="22395" e_name="OneSpin Solutions"]; Harry Foster, chief verification scientist at [g... » read more

What’s Next For UVM?


The infrastructure for much of the chip verification being done today is looking dated and limited in scope. Design has migrated to new methodologies, standards and tools that are being introduced to deal with heterogeneous integration, more customization, and increased complexity. Verification methodologies started appearing soon after the release of SystemVerilog. Initially they were inten... » read more

Enhancing Verilog Designs With Embedded PSL


PSL (Property Specification Language) is one of the easiest introductions to the world of design properties, assertions and coverage points to anybody familiar with Verilog HDL. The designer of a digital circuit has the best understanding of the operation of the circuit, which makes her or him the best person to define properties that will fire assertion messages in case of incorrect design beh... » read more

Can Verification Meet In The Middle?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these issues with; Stan Sokorac, senior principal design engineer for [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Frank Schirrmeister, senior group director for product marketing for the system development suite of [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; Harry Foster, chief verification scientist at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"], Bernie... » read more

Can Verification Meet In The Middle?


Since the dawn of time for the EDA industry, the classic V diagram has defined the primary design flow. On the left hand side of the V, the design is progressively refined and partitioned into smaller pieces. At the bottom of the V, verification takes over and as you travel up the right-hand side of the V, verification and integration happens until the entire design has been assembled and valid... » read more

Achieving 100% Functional Coverage By Operational Assertion-Based Verification


This white paper presents Operational Assertion-Based Verification (ABV), an advanced formal verification methodology resulting in a predictable, small number of high-level assertions capturing the functionality of a design. Operational ABV enables an automatic formal coverage analysis, which identifies holes in verification plans, unverified design functionality as well as errors and omissio... » read more

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