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Improving Verification Productivity by Bringing Precision and Automation to Test-Suite Generation

AUTHOR: Jun Takara, SVP Engineering

In today’s world of coverage-driven verification (CDV), verification engineers use both Directed and Constrained Random approaches to generate test suites (a.k.a. test patterns or test vectors). The Directed approach is usually chosen to start off with feature-specific verification processes because of its simplicity and ease of use. Typically shortly after, engineers elect to switch to the Constrained Random approach because it generates test suites to cover many features efficiently. The Directed approach is easy to set up and is precise in terms of generating test suites to cover the target parameter combinations. However, it can quickly become labor intensive as it requires considerable manual work to generate many test suites for each of the features. The Constrained Random approach automatically generates test suites. However, it is a wasteful methodology by nature, and as the coverage nears the target, its “hit rate” significantly worsens. This condition results in requiring substantially more time than truly needed. Having to use both Directed and Constrained Random approaches is not efficient, to say the least. I, a nearly 20-year veteran in the register-transfer level design verification space, view it as a pain point…………….. CONTINUE READING