Writing Testbenches using SystemVerilog - Bergeron, Janick

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Résumé :
If you survey hardware design groups, you will learn that between 60% and 80% of their effort is dedicated to verification. This may seem unusually large, but I include in verification all debugging and correctness checking activities, not just writing and running testbenches. Every time a hardware designer pulls up a waveform viewer, he or she performs a verification task. With today?s ASIC and FPGA sizes and geometries, getting a design to fit and run at speed is no longer the main challenge. It is to get the right design, working as intended, at the right time. Unlike synthesizable coding, there is no particular coding style nor language required for verification. The freedom of using any l- guage that can be interfaced to a simulator and of using any features of that language has produced a wide array of techniques and approaches to verification. The continued absence of constraints and historical shortage of available expertise in verification, c- pled with an apparent under-appreciation of and under-investment in the verification function, has resulted in several different ad hoc approaches. The consequences of an informal, ill-equipped and understaffed verification process can range from a non-functional design requiring several re-spins, through a design with only a s- set of the intended functionality, to a delayed product shipment.

Sommaire:
Janick Bergeron is a Scientist at Synopsys, Inc. He is the author of the best-selling book Writing Testbenches: Functional Verification of HDL Models and the moderator of the Verification Guild. Prior to joining Synopsys, Janick worked on verification methodology at Qualis Design Corporation and Bell-Northern Research. He holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the Universit? du Qu?bec, and an MBA degree granted through the University of Oregon. Eduard Cerny is a Principal Engineer, R&D, in the Verification Group at Synopsys, Inc. He joined Synopsys in 2001 after 25 years in academia, as Professor of Computer Science at the Universit? de Montr?al. Eduard has a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Loyola College in Montreal, Canada, and a M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His interests have been in design, verification and test of hardware, and he is author of many articles in these areas. Alan Hunter, BEng(Hons), MSc, is the Design Verification Methodology Programme manager at ARM Ltd. and is leading the design verification methodology work for ARM worldwide. This work covers all areas from CPU design verification through systems and system component design verification. His main areas of interest include optimizing design verification efficiency and quality, formal methods, and determinism in the design verification flow. Prior to joining ARM, Alan worked for a small formal verification company specializing in property and equivalence checking. Andy Nightingale, BEng(Hons), MBCS CITP, is a consultant engineer at ARM Ltd and has led the SoC Verification group in ARM's Cambridge and Sheffield design centers for the past four years. The group covers ARM PrimeXSys platforms and PrimeCell development, including advanced AXI- and AHB-based system backplanecomponents such as bus interconnects and high-performance memory controllers. Prior to working at ARM, Andy worked as a real-time embedded systems engineer for a successful scientific instrument company, primarily serving the semiconductor industry....