What is Chip Design Verification
Verification is the process of taking an implementation of a chip at some level of abstraction and confirming that the implementation meets some specification or reference design. [¹]
The purpose of verification is to identify and correct design defects in the chip before it goes into manufacturing. There’s a verification step for each step in the chip design process, as shown in the diagram below.
The purpose of verification is to identify and correct design defects in the chip before it goes into manufacturing. There’s a verification step for each step in the chip design process, as shown in the diagram below.
For the purposes of this post and subsequent posts, design verification is focused on answering the following questions as depicted in the diagram above:
- Does it meet the specifications?
- Does it correctly implement the microarchitecture?
These questions are answered via the following techniques:
- Property Checking: Are all of the properties of the design set forth in the specification actually exercised correctly in the design?
- Simulation: Given an executable model of the design, send stimulus into the design, and check the correctness of the corresponding simulated output of the executable model (manually or automatically via a reference model or checker)
That’s it for today. Please leave feedback or questions in the comments below.
[¹]: Lam, William K. C. Hardware Design Verification: Simulation and Formal Method-based Approaches. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Profession Technical Reference, 2005. 2. Print.
[²]: Redrawn diagram from Lam, William K. C. Hardware Design Verification: Simulation and Formal Method-based Approaches. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Profession Technical Reference, 2005. 3. Print.
