Over the years, design complexity and size have stubbornly obeyed the growth curve predicted by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. Moore stated that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The chip makers want to pack as many functions as possible in their SoCs and provide as many feature additions to…
The quality of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) is a major issue for design teams utilizing third-party sources for portions of their SoCs. Quality is even more critical for highly configurable types of IP because customers license it specifically to address the unique requirements of their systems and markets. The on-chip interconnect fabric is perhaps the…
Interrupt handling is a well-known feature of any SoC which usually comprises of CPU, Bus Fabric, several Controllers, Sub-Systems & many IP blocks as part of it. In some way or other Interrupts are used to act as the sideband signals of the Design/IP Blocks & most of the time it’s not the part of the main…
Introduction As technologies advance, we see increasingly complex SoCs in the market, SoCs that have various wireless modules, and processors that use new bus architectures to communicate with them. They can also have various interfaces like I2C, PCM, I2S, AHB, etc. Yet, these SoC components will share a single clock control unit. This module generates…
As AXI protocol and Cache Coherency are commonly used concepts these days in almost each and every complex SoC’s so knowledge of those concepts are must for everyone to know how it works. All AXI and Cache Coherency concepts are guided by one of the most experienced Verification Engineer in the industry Mr. Rahul Bhardwaj…
SEQUENCER The job of the sequencer is to control the flow of sequences to the driver. The fact that you can write six lines of code yet have a powerful implementation is the beauty of UVM. Having the sequencer mechanism prepared for you in the library allows you to build the testbench faster and more…
In earlier post i.e. https://theartofverification.com/uvm-testbench-architecture/ we learned which all components are required to develop UVM Environment/Testbench to verify complex Designs. In this blog post we will verify a small RTL Design by developing complete UVM Environment. Let’s start with the basic RTL Design and understand it’s specifications/working. Here as we can see that in the…
If you’re looking to enter the world of ASIC or FPGA verification, then chances are you’ve heard of Universal Verification Methodology (UVM). UVM has become the industry standard for verifying digital designs, and as such, it is a crucial skill set for anyone looking to break into the field. Whether you’re a recent graduate or…
SystemVerilog is a hardware description and verification language that extends the capabilities of Verilog HDL. It is widely used in the semiconductor industry for the design and verification of digital circuits and systems. If you are preparing for a SystemVerilog interview, you may be asked a variety of questions related to the language, its features,…
Functional coverage and code coverage both are contributing highly on sign off criteria for verification. Implementers have to make sure that their test plan and test environment is intelligent enough to satisfy the code/functional coverage closure. Code coverage is generated by tool with the help of the simulations generated by the test environment. So test…