SOC Verification 3

In the last post, we saw the traditional SOC verification approach. In this post, we are going to see the unique approaches in SOC verification. SOC verification becomes more complex because of many different kinds of IPs on the chip. A good understanding of the overall application of SOC is essential. The more extensive the knowledge of external interfaces, the more complete the SOC verification will be.

Verification Planning Guidelines

The following should be considered in the verification planning.

External Interface Emulation When you verify the complex SOCs, you should consider the full chip emulation. The external interface of each and every IPs on the SOC as well as the SOC data interfaces should also be examined. This should be performed simultaneously for all cores.

Unit level to Top level SOC designs are built from bottom to top. The truth is that the unit level must be used in any of the design hierarchy imposes a need to verify these modules in any possible scenarios.

Re-Use the verification components As the leaf modules are assembled to create the SOC, many of the leaf module interfaces are internal interfaces between various modules of SOC, and there is no longer need to drive their inputs. However other interfaces are external interfaces to SOC. If the test generators for external interfaces are independent components, then most system level stimuli can be taken as is from the various module environment.

Many components in SOC can work independently and work in parallel with other components. In order to exercise the SOC in corner cases, the tests should be able to describe parallel streams of activity for each component separately.

Integration Monitors The primary focus of SOC verification is on integration. Most bugs appear in the integration b/w blocks. An integration monitor that comes with an IP can be great help to find the integration problem. It can be hooked in to the simulation environment and just run to see any integration violation appears on the monitor. This can save the time dramatically. This kind of IP monitors can bring lot of benefits in quality of SOC.

Coverage It is important tool for identifying areas that were never exercised. Both code and toggle coverage are the first indication for areas that were never exercised. However they never tell you that you achieved the full verification. Functional coverage allows you to define what functionality of the device should be monitored.

Looking at functional coverage reports, you may conclude that certain features were already exercised and focus your efforts on the areas that were neglected. But most significant impact of functional coverage in context of SOC verification is in eliminating the need to write many of the most time consuming and hard to write tests.

Conclusion The main focus of SOC verification needs to be on the integration of the many blocks it is composed of. There is a need for welldefined ways for the IP developer to communicate the integration rules in an executable way, and to help the integrator verify that the IP was incorporated correctly. The complexity introduced by the many hardware blocks and by the software running on the processor points out the need to change some of the traditional verification schemes.