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Verification Techniques

Verification is the process of demonstrating the functional correctness of a design against its specifications. There are several techniques for verification including static verification, functional simulation, FPGA prototyping, and emulation. Each technique has advantages and limitations for verifying different aspects of a design.

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75 views

Verification Techniques

Verification is the process of demonstrating the functional correctness of a design against its specifications. There are several techniques for verification including static verification, functional simulation, FPGA prototyping, and emulation. Each technique has advantages and limitations for verifying different aspects of a design.

Uploaded by

du.le0802
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Verification techniques

• Verification is the process of demonstrating the functional


correctness of a design with respect to the design specifications.
Verification does not confirm the correctness of the design
specification and assumes that the design specification is correct.
It is one of the most challenging steps of the IC design cycle, and is
the main reason for IC re-spin.

• Purpose
– Functional correctness of individual IPs
– Internal module communication
– External module communication
– End to end functional paths
– Pad connectivity
– Clock and reset circuits
– Power up and down sequence
– Complete integration of all IPs
Verification techniques
Verification

Static Verification Functional Simulation FPGA Prototying Emulation


Static verification
• Static verification is the process of verifying the
design against some predefined rules without
executing the design. It allows you to verify your
design at an early stage, without any stimulus or
setup, and hence is performed early in the IC
design cycle, that is, as soon as the RTL code is
available. It does not perform any timing checks.
The sooner a bug is found, the easier it is to fix it.
• Purpose
– The purpose of static verification is to reduce the
verification effort at the RTL level.
Static verification techniques
Static Verification

Reset Domain Crossing Clock Domain Crossing Formal Verification Static Checks

• Advantages
– Detects bug early in the design cycle
– Less time consuming
– Reliable
– Faster
– Exhaustive
– Large designs are easily handled
• Mentor, A Siemens Business, offers a broad spectrum of static and formal
solutions and applications, including Questa® Formal Verification, Questa
Clock-Domain Crossing (CDC), Questa Reset Domain Crossing (RDC), and
the Questa Formal Verification Apps. These formal-based technologies
complement simulation in a number of key areas.
• Synopsys: VC Formal, SpyGlass
• Cadence: LEC, Xcelium
Functional Simulation
• Functional simulation is the process of verifying the functional behavior of
a design by simulating it in software. It does not consider the timing delays
of the internal logic or interconnects, and is not helpful in software
development.
• Purpose
– The purpose of simulation is to verify the individual IPs or the individual blocks of
the IC. System-level verification is not possible with functional simulation.
Functional Simulation (contd)
• Advantages
– Quick to set up
– High visibility in the design
– Bugs are identified early in the design
– All corner cases of the designs are verified
– Not expensive
• Limitations
– Very slow speed
– Complex designs are not easily simulated
– Verification of the entire IC is difficult
– All possible scenarios and states are not covered
– Verification of software is not possible
– Timing-related issues are not identified
FPGA Prototyping
• FPGA prototyping is the process of verifying the functionality of the
system (IC) on FPGAs. With the rise in the complexity of ICs and the
increasing demand to shorten the time to market of ICs, FPGA prototyping
remains a key solution.
• Purpose
– The purpose of FPGA prototyping is to verify that the design operates as
expected when it is driven with live data, and all its external interfaces are
working correctly.
FPGA Prototyping (contd)
• Advantages
– High speed
– Early software development and validation
– Useful for verifying critical IPs used in applications like aerospace,
military, medical etc.
– Complete IC design is verified
– Reduces risk of re-spin of ICs
– Reduces time to market
• Limitations
– Slow to compile (than emulators)
– Partitioning of designs is error-prone and tedious
– ASIC to FPGA clock conversion is complex
– FPGA to FPGA interconnections are limited
– Very limited debug capability
– Long bring up time as ASIC code has to be converted to FPGA code
– Expensive and time consuming to build the FPGA board
Emulator
• Emulation, also called as pre-silicon validation, is the
process of verifying the functionality of the system on a
hardware device called as an emulator. An emulator can
handle both system-level designs (in C, C++, or SystemC)
and RTL designs (in Verilog or VHDL). Emulators are much
faster than simulators. A design that takes days in
simulation, will take only hours in emulation.
• Purpose
– The purpose of emulation is to find issues in the system level
design with live data, to verify the system integration, and for
development of the embedded software.
• Workflow
– The emulator workflow is similar to the FPGA prototyping flow,
except that you use emulator tools in place of the FPGA
prototyping tools.
Emulator (contd)
• Advantages
– Higher speed (than simulators)
– Higher design visibility (than FPGA prototyping) and hence
higher debug capability
– Faster to compile (than emulators)
– Parallel verification of many designs possible
– Just like simulators, emulators can be stopped and later
started from the same point
– Verification of embedded software is possible
• Limitations
– Slower to compile (than simulators)
– Very expensive
– Long set up time
– Not all functional paths are covered
Functional vs Formal Verifications
• Functional verification is usually exhaustive, checking all boundary conditions to get
a golden RTL, it is prior to synthesis. It is generally done using a tool that does timing
verification such as NCSIM/SimVision and ModelSim.

• Formal verification tools compare RTL golden netlist with mapped/gate


level/synthesized netlist using formal techniques and algorithms such as bounded
model checking, SMV, CTL, or temporal methods by representing the circuit as
canonical binary decision diagrams, Kripke structures or even perhaps Petri nets.
Bottomline is to determine whether two circuit structures are mathematically equal
i.e. they would produce same boolean outputs. This is a rather quick

• In EDA industry a subset of formal verification known as logic equivalence check is


used mostly for digital designs although formal techniques are being applied to
analog designs and mixed signal circuits as well but BDDs and Kirpke graphs are
treated as discrete automata having finite states and transitions/paths.
0-In (Mentor Graphics)
Formal Pro (Mentor Graphics)
Conformal LEC (Cadence)
VC Formal (Synopsys).

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