Posts Tagged ‘verification’
Monday, May 4th, 2020
 These days verification teams no longer question whether hardware assisted verification should be used in their projects. Rather, they ask at which stage they should start using it.
Contemporary System-on-Chip (SoC) designs are already sufficiently complex to make HDL simulation a bottleneck during verification, without even mentioning hardware-software co-verification or firmware and software testing. Thus, IC design emulation is an increasingly popular technique of verification with hardware-in-the-loop.
Recently, hardware assisted verification became much more affordable thanks to the availability of high capacity FPGAs (like Xilinx Virtex UltraScale US440) and their adoption for emulation by EDA vendors.
A good example of such an emulation platform is Aldec’s HES-DVM. It can accommodate designs over 300 Million ASIC gates on multi-FPGA boards (HES-US-1320), where the capacity scales by interconnecting multiple boards in a backplane.
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Tags: ARM, asic, embedded, Emulation, FPGA, HES-DVM, simulation, SoC, verification
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Wednesday, February 19th, 2020
Have you ever worked on a group project where you had to combine your work with that of a colleague of a different engineering discipline but the absence of an efficient means of doing so affected the project’s overall outcome? Well, for software and hardware engineers developing an SoC, the merging of their respective engineering efforts for verification purposes is a big challenge.
Early access to hardware-software co-verification allows hardware and software teams to work concurrently and set the foundation to a successful SoC project. However, many co-emulation methodologies are based on processor virtual models which are not accurate representations of the design. Fortunately, Aldec has a solution that integrates an ARM-based SoC from Xilinx, specifically a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, with the largest Xilinx UltraScale FPGA. Since the Zynq device includes the hard IP of the ARM processor, our solution provides an accurate representation of the ARM-based SoC design for co-verification.
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Tags: ARM, asic, embedded, Emulation, FPGA, HES-DVM, SoC, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, Validation, verification, Zynq
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Thursday, December 12th, 2019
Understandably, hardware designed for an aircraft, or indeed any safety critical application, must be robust. I also believe that all engineers wish to verify their designs as thoroughly as possible, anyway. However, there are limiting factors; most notably the high complexity of most designs. Since we are unable to discover and verify the design against all abnormal conditions, the main question is: when is robustness verification truly complete?
Random nature of robustness
Test scenarios for robustness verification always contain many input stability issues, such as erroneous values, lack or loss of value, unexpected timing and unpredicted toggling. Certainly there is a significant random factor but it should not lead us to oversimplify this part of verification by applying less or more advanced randomization methods only. The robustness of any design, and especially for projects where human lives are potentially at risk, cannot be achieved by inspecting the results of randomly generated scenarios. It must be part of the original design.
RTCA/DO-254
The “Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware” document does not explicitly address robustness testing. However, two supplements – “FAA Order 8110.105A” and the “EASA Certification Memorandum” – clarify that to demonstrate robustness, the applicant should also define the requirements-based testing. In other words, it is expected that abnormal operating conditions be captured and documented as derived requirements.
How many “robustness requirements” do we need?
Having extra requirements for robustness verification does not solve the problem stated above, so the question really is: how many “robustness requirements” will be enough?
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Tags: FPGA, safety-critical, verification
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Monday, March 26th, 2018
 In this blog, I am going to discuss different phases that UVM follows.
The reason why UVM came up with such phases is because synchronization among all design-testbench was necessary. Using Verilog and VHDL, verification engineers did not have facilities such as clocking block or run phases. Now, it is very important that the time at which test vectors applied from test-bench reaches the Design Under Test(DUT) at the same time. If timing for different signals varies then synchronicity lacks and thus verification can not be achieved as expected. That is the main reason why UVM has different phases.
The whole environment of UVM is structured on phases. They are active right from the beginning of the simulation to the end of the simulation. The topic discussed here will help people who are new to UVM. To start with, most of the phases are call back methods. The methods are either function or task. They are all derived from the UVM_Component class, same as other test-bench components. If you remember the first blog, we went through how to write a class. We understood the OOP concepts such as inheritance and even used them by extending the base class. Now, creating objects of the class is also important in order to use it as and when required. It is known as build_phase. This step takes place first. Next, after we write different classes, it is important to connect them. For example, if I write different classes with different functionality, at the end I provide them all under one top class. In Verilog it was top level module. In system Verilog it was class Environment. Under that main class, you connect all your semi classes which is known as connect_phase. Next, comes the end_of_elaboration_phase. By the time this phase becomes active, everything is connected and simulation next moment on wards is ready to begin.
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Tags: asic, co-simulation, coverage, debugging, documentation, FPGA, osvvm, Riviera-PRO, uvm, verification
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Monday, March 26th, 2018
 As an Applications Engineer I visit lots of potential customers, or talk to them at trade shows, who are doing FPGA designs but don’t own a commercial simulator. I ask them why that is. Most of the time it is budgetary restrictions. They don’t have funds to buy additional tools. I understand their situation and point out to them that at Aldec we have a very cost-effective simulator. But that is not what I want to talk about in this blog. I want to talk about engineers who say: “I am happy with the simulator my FPGA vendor provided me”, or “My simulations only take 15-20 minutes to run, I don’t think I need a faster simulator”, or “We don’t run simulations”.
That last response haunts me the most. For instance, at a recent site visit I was told: “We just load the design on our FPGA and test it out”. I asked how long does a full test iteration (i.e. program FPGA -> test -> debug -> re-code -> re-program) takes. They said about an hour or two, depending on the bug. I then asked how much of that time spent just running synthesis and programming the board? They said about 30 minutes.
Next, I proceeded to explain the benefits of running simulations in such scenario.
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Tags: debugging, design, FPGA Simulation, Riviera-PRO, simulation, verification
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Thursday, March 15th, 2018
 Let’s say you have a block you need to verify. How do you know that the stimulus you are about to use is exhaustive enough and that you have covered the necessary scenarios/situations to prove it is working correctly? This is where functional coverage comes in. SystemVerilog’s functional coverage constructs allow you to quantify the completeness of your stimulus by recording the values that have occurred on your signals.
Consider an 8-bit address signal, paddr, and a 32-bit data signal, pwdata. Assigning a coverpoint to each signal will direct your simulator to track these signals during simulation and record the number of hits. For each coverpoint, bins can be created to organize the possible signal values into meaningful categories. Finally, a covergroup is used to encapsulate it all and is instantiated using the new() constructor. Associating the covergroup with a clock event is also a good way to trigger the coverage sampling.
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Tags: functional coverage, Riviera-PRO, simulation, systemverilog, verification
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Monday, January 29th, 2018
 In this blog, my major focus is on explaining the concepts such as Sequence, Sequencer, Driver and showing how the communication takes place from sequence to sequencer and from sequencer to driver. In the previous blog, I included a top-level diagram of the UVM structure, showing different base classes. If you need refresh your memory on where the classes Sequence, Sequencer and Drivers stand please click https://www.aldec.com/en/company/blog/149–understanding-the-inner-workings-of-uvm.
So, let’s look at the main concepts and follow the communication mechanism they use for the effective execution of a test.
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Tags: asic, co-simulation, coverage, debugging, documentation, FPGA, os-vvm, Riviera-PRO, uvm, verification
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Wednesday, November 29th, 2017
 Data analysis is often a very time consuming process for a hardware design or verification engineer. We always end up using the waveform viewer which may not be very efficient in giving us a high-level overview of what we’re looking for. Data that is spread across a long simulation cycle is very hard to visualize on the waveform. Whenever I have to analyze a huge chunk of data, I always wonder what would be the best way to do it. It is often cumbersome to go through even a millisecond’s worth of waveform data to analyze the bigger picture. There are of course other tools that can take a VCD file and perform an analysis but that involves buying and learning to use an additional tool.
Sometimes it’s not feasible to invest time and money into new tools. So we always go back to our trusty waveform viewer to make sense of the results. But what if there is a better way of analyzing such data, especially if you are doing some kind of signal processing application and have a lot of data that you would rather view in a format other than the time domain based representation of a waveform? For example, imagine you are trying to visualize the data of an FFT engine. On a waveform, it is next to impossible to visualize this.
In Riviera-PRO we have the Plots feature which can help you. The plot window ties directly to the simulation database, so you don’t have to code anything new or learn a new tool. Just with a few clicks you can add objects to the plot viewer and, based on the settings, it will generate a plot of that object. Sounds very simple but it gives you a bigger picture of what your design object is doing over the course of the entire simulation, rather than just the slice you can see on the waveform between two points of time.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: co-simulation, debugging, DSP, hardware, plots, processing, Riviera-PRO, signal, simulation, verification, waveform
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Wednesday, October 18th, 2017
 For a long time I have been a fan of code coverage tools that are embedded into the simulators themselves, and which give you the ability to switch easily between the code and the coverage results. It is particularly helpful to have a way of navigating the hierarchy, selecting a coverage result and then being able to look into the source code and make changes.
I recently had occasion to explain to someone how the feature works in Aldec’s Riviera-PRO, and to reflect on the tool developments that led to this great capability. As you may be aware, Aldec has a number of legacy coverage tools that allow you to view the coverage results from within the simulator; and which give you easy access to the coverage results and the corresponding lines of code. With the introduction of our unified coverage database – in .acdb format – it became possible to see the code coverage results in a more flexible format. The biggest boost, in my opinion, was the introduction of a cross-probing capability.
For those of you who are wondering how to use this feature.
- Open Riviera-PRO 2016.06 or newer and run your design with Coverage Enabled.
- Open the datasets window (View-> Hierarchy and Objects-> Datasets).
- Right-click in the window and select Add.
- Add the .acdb file associated with your design (it should show up as Simulation n, where n is number).
- Click on the newly added database.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: coverage, Riviera-PRO, verification, verilog, VHDL
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Tuesday, September 26th, 2017
 Well, summer has been and gone; and for most of us it was a time to relax and reflect on our working practices. What can we do to achieve better results? And what can we do to break out of the routine of working on so many revisions?
For me, one of my summer break ponderings was thinking back on a trick I learned while working with my colleagues at the Silesian University of Technology.
CMOS technology is the one that has dominated all applications of digital circuits. Power consumed by a CMOS digital circuit is the sum of two components: static power and dynamic power. The static power is a characteristic feature of the technology process used, and is associated with leakage currents in steady state. The dynamic power consumed by a CMOS gate is proportional to average switching activity at the output of the gate, which describes how often the state at the gate output is changing. The dynamic power component can thus be considered and minimized in the appropriate process of logic synthesis.
The essence of logic synthesis oriented toward energy-efficiency requires finding a circuit structure in which the number of state transitions is minimized.
Switching global clock networks are responsible for a significant part of the total power dissipated by a CMOS VLSI circuit. That’s why many engineers try to block the clock signal to achieve power reductions in synchronous circuits.
Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs), and especially Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), constitute a relatively new and rapidly developing branch of digital electronics. Constantly growing logic capacities at moderate prices make PLDs an attractive platform for not only prototyping but also short- and medium-volume production.
It is not always obvious though how best to map logic structures (resources) within a given PLD architecture when designing with energy-efficiency in mind. In particular, implementing clock gating is difficult, as PLD circuits contain dedicated clock networks, which do not contain any gating elements. “Disabling” the clock signal in PLD structures can be accomplished in two ways: firstly, by utilizing the “Enable Clock” inputs of memory elements or, secondly, by distributing the clock signal using local clock lines or general-purpose routing resources (which enable the insertion of logic gates). For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: FPGA, fsm, ICCMSE2017, Low-power, Riviera-PRO, university, verification
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These days verification teams no longer question whether hardware assisted verification should be used in their projects. Rather, they ask at which stage they should start using it.
