It is unfortunate that design and verification methodologies have often been out of sync with each other, and increasingly so over the past 20 years. The design methodology change that caused one particular divergence was the introduction of design Intellectual Property (IP). IP meant that systems were no longer designed and built in a pseudo top-down manner, but contemplated at a higher level and constructed in a bottom up, ‘lego-like’ manner by choosing appropriate blocks that could implement the necessary functions. (more…)
The Breker Trekker
Posts Tagged ‘Portable Stimulus Standard’
Methodology Convergence
Thursday, August 8th, 2019Portable Stimulus: Finding The Killer App
Thursday, November 29th, 2018Functional verification vendors have been talking a lot about the Portable Stimulus Standard (PSS), but what is it and why should you care? To put it in stark terms – because it is the first language that supports verification methodology and because the existing methodology is failing to provide the capabilities required for system-level verification. (more…)
The Making of a Standard
Thursday, June 21st, 2018The industry waits with bated breath for the Accellera board to approve the Portable Stimulus 1.0 specification. It has been a long and arduous process over the past four years to get to this point, a process that most people never get to experience. This was my first standard, and to say it was an eye opener is somewhat of an understatement. In this blog, I am not going to dwell on the many bruises I suffered or the technical discussions that often seemed like personal attacks. Instead, I want to make the industry aware of some of the difficulties associated with bringing a new and somewhat revolutionary standard to market. (more…)
Time To Be Heard
Monday, October 2nd, 2017Accellera has just extended the review period for the Portable Stimulus Standard. The committee is now seeking comments up until the end of October. Breker would like to join the committee and say how important it is for users to get involved with this standard. While we, as vendors, have some experience in this area, we are not doing this day in and day out. We need your guidance and feedback.
Breker applauds Mark Glasser, principal engineer for NVIDIA, for being a user who is spending the time and effort to understand the emerging Portable Stimulus Standard (PSS). The points he raised in his recent blog are shared by a number of other users in the industry. His passion comes from the fact that he sees the potential of the work that is being undertaken and the impact that it could have on the verification community and the entire system development flow.
Users are, by definition, those in the trenches experiencing the problems and trying to find solutions. Within that community, there are only a few that can see beyond the current design and can look towards the future. Of those, only a precious few can help to influence the direction of the future. If you are one of those, then we ask you to get involved. Sitting on a standards committee can be tough and often dirty work, but there is no better way to guide the future direction of the industry.
We share Mark’s feelings that we should leverage the extensive expertise that exists in the language design community. It has taken many hundreds of man years of effort to get C++ to where it is today and we have seen, during our interactions with users, the power and flexibility that C++ provides to this problem.
Understanding Portable Stimulus Graphs
Wednesday, September 13th, 2017When people talk about the Portable Stimulus Standard (“PSS”) they throw around the term “graph based” as if that somehow clarifies everything. They usually don’t bother to describe what it means, beyond it being some simple mathematical model. Some vendors even confuse it with the term “graphical”. To simplify this confusion, for this blog we will use the term “visual”. This blog will answer questions about how PSS relates to graphs and how those graphs relate to other similar graph-based models already used within the industry. (more…)
Constrain Me, Please
Thursday, December 8th, 2016In the movies, when a person acts irrationally they are usually declared to be mad and quickly placed in a straitjacket for the protection of themselves and those around them. If we continue those thoughts into the world of verification, SystemVerilog must be declared to be a mad language. (more…)
