Bug Escapes And The Definition Of Done


National Semiconductor's design center (NSTA) in Herzliya was the place where I fell in love with chip verification. I joined the team in 1999, still during my BSc, and met a group of innovators with a passion to create great ASICs and improve the way we did it at all costs. It was fast-moving learning for me, both on the verification engineering and verification management sides of things. ... » read more

I’m Almost Done


The city of Belgrade is renovating the street where I live. They are also building a new building next to mine so that I can see the construction work from my balcony. Last week, they blocked the street for some 20 minutes, and people got out of their cars and waited outside for the road to open. The construction workers were not in a hurry, and it seemed like everyone was ok with that, so I... » read more

Challenges In Using AI In Verification


Pressure to use AI/ML techniques in design and verification is growing as the amount of data generated from complex chips continues to explode, but how to begin building those capabilities into tools, flows and methodologies isn't always obvious. For starters, there is debate about whether the data needs to be better understood before those techniques are used, or whether it's best to figure... » read more

The Meaning Of Verification


When I ask the question "Why do we do verification?" there are generally two types of responses. One of them sees the glass as half empty and the other as half full. It depends upon how you look at the problem and if you see verification as being a positive or negative operation. The negative answer is that we do verification to find bugs. This relies on the mechanical function of creating v... » read more

Ensuring Functional Safety In Design


Mohammed Abdelwahid (Ali), automotive logic test product manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business, discusses how to maximize coverage in the different ASIL standards for logic BiST, how to make testing more efficient, and what impact that has on area and test time. » read more

Ensuring Coverage In Large SoCs


Sven Beyer, product manager for design verification at OneSpin Solutions, talks about why formal technology is required to ensure coverage in some of the newest chips, how it deals with potential interactions and different use cases, and why it is gaining traction in automotive applications. » read more

Three Steps To Faster Low Power Coverage Using UPF 3.0 Information Models


Controlling power has its costs. The added power elements and their interactions make verification of low-power designs much more difficult and the engineer’s job overwhelmingly complex and tedious. Early versions of the Unified Power Format (UPF) provided some relief, but lacked provisions for a standardized methodology for low-power coverage. Ad hoc approaches are error prone and highly ... » read more

Using Static Analysis For Functional Safety


Fadi Maamari, group director for R&D at Synopsys, explains why static analysis is suddenly in demand in auto chip design, how it can help to choose the best implementation of functional safety approaches, and where it fits into the design flow. » read more

Portable Stimulus And Digital Twins


It has been a year since Accellera's Portable Test and Stimulus Specification became a standard. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact it has had, and the future direction of it, with  Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Tom Fitzpatrick, strategic verification architect for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Tom Anderson, technical marketing consultant for OneSp... » read more

Abstract Verification


Verification relies on a separation of concerns. Otherwise the task has no end. Sometimes we do it without thinking, but as an industry, we have never managed to fully define it such that it can become an accepted and trusted methodology. This becomes particularly true when we bring abstraction into the picture. A virtual prototype is meant to be true to behavior, but there could be timing d... » read more

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