Title
Hybrid Approach to Faster Functional Verification with Full Visibility
Abstract
Logic simulators are still the most popular verification tools, and they can provide full controllability and visibility during the verification process. However, their simulation speed is too slow for a large amount of input patterns. Higher speeds are possible with hardware emulation such as FPGAs. But, because of poor visibility in the FPGAs, it is very hard to debug using this approach. The work described in this article focuses on building similar debugging capabilities for low-cost FPGAs that currently are available only in expensive emulators, such as the full visibility provided by software simulators. The authors propose an efficient approach to record an FPGA's internal behavior and replay the interesting period of time in a software simulator. High simulation speed is still possible with this approach because most simulation efforts are completed in the FPGA. Besides this, full visibility and a better debugging environment can be provided in the software simulation while replaying the time frames with errors. To reduce hardware overhead, the authors also propose an algorithm to minimize the amount of recorded data. Experimental results confirm the efficiency of using this approach.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/MDT.2007.46
IEEE Design & Test of Computers
Keywords
Field
DocType
full visibility,efficient approach,hybrid approach,high simulation speed,full controllability,poor visibility,software simulation,simulation effort,faster functional verification,low-cost fpgas,simulation speed,software simulator,simulator,synchronization,hybrid,formal verification,field programmable gate arrays,functional verification,visibility,logic simulation,debugging
Observability,Functional verification,Controllability,Computer science,Software,Logic simulation,Embedded system,Debugging,Formal verification,Hardware emulation
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
24
2
0740-7475
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.56
7
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Chin-Lung Chuang1101.96
Wei-hsiang Cheng2111.48
Dong-Jung Lu391.27
Chien-Nan Jimmy Liu49727.07