Friday, September 9, 2016

Quick chat with Alok Jain : Keynote speaker, DVCon India 2016

Alok Jain
All of us have heard the story of a woodcutter and the importance of the quote “Sharpen your axe”. It applies well to everything we do including verification. Two decades back, the focus of a verification engineer was predominantly on “What to Verify”. As complexity grew “How to Verify” became equally important. To enable this, EDA teams rolled out multiple technologies & methodologies. As we try to assimilate & integrate these flows amidst first time silicon & cost pressure, it is important for us to sharpen our axe through continuous learning, applying the right tool for the right job and applying it effectively.

Alok Jain, Senior Group Director in the Advanced Verification Division at Cadence would be discussing on similar lines as part of his DV track keynote on Day 1 at DVCon India 2016. With 20+ years of industry experience, Alok leads the Advanced Verification Division at Cadence India. Having associated with different technologies around verification in the past 2 decades, Alok candidly shared his views on the challenges beyond complexity that verification teams need to focus on. Here is a curtain raiser for his talk "Verification of complex SoCs" 

Alok your keynote topic focuses on challenges in verification beyond the complexity resulting from Moore’s law. Tell us more about it?

The keynote is going to focus on challenges and potential solution for verification of complex SoCs. Verifying a complex SoC consisting of tens of embedded cores and hundreds of IPs is a major challenge in the industry today. One of the big challenges is performance and capacity. Given the size and complexity of modern SoCs, tests can run for 18-24 hours or even more. One has to figure out how to get the best verification throughput. Another challenge is generation of test benches and tests. The test benches have to be developed in a way which can achieve good performance in both simulation and hardware acceleration. Tests have to be created that stress the SoC under the application use cases, low power scenarios, and multi-core coherency scenarios. The tests have to be re-usable across pre-silicon and post-silicon verification and validation platforms. Yet another challenge is coverage. One has to measure verification coverage across formal, simulation, and acceleration platforms at the SoC level to know when you are done. The final challenge is how to effectively debug across RTL, test bench, and embedded software on multiple verification platforms.

In the last decade, advancements in verification was focused primarily on unifying HVL(s) & methodologies. What changes do you foresee in verification flows ‘Beyond UVM’?

UVM is very well suited for IP, Sub-system and some specific aspects of SoC verification. However, UVM is not the best approach for general SoC verification. UVM is essentially developed for “bottom-up” verification where the focus is on trying to exhaustively verify IP/sub-systems. SoCs require a more “top-down” verification where the focus is on stressing the SoC under important application use cases. There is a need to reuse SoC content across simulation, emulation, FPGA and post-silicon. UVM is optimized for simulation and is too slow and heavy for high speed platforms. Finally, there is a need to drive software stimulus on CPUs in coordination with hardware interfaces. It is difficult in UVM to drive and control software and hardware interfaces. All this is asking us to explore options beyond UVM. The keynote will cover some more insights into options beyond UVM.

The rise of IoT is stretching the design demands to far ends i.e. server class vs edge node devices. How do you see verification flows catering to these demands?

Several of the requirements for IoT verification are similar to the ones for complex SoCs. But then there are some unique additional requirements from the IoT world. The first is simply the cost of verification. For complex SoCs, the cost of verification has been steadily rising. For IoT applications, one has to consider alternative methods and flows that can reduce the cost. One option is to use some form of a correct by construction approach where the design is specifically done in a way to enable a simpler form of verification. Another approach is to put much more emphasis on reuse. This includes horizontal reuse which is portability across multiple platforms and vertical reuse which is reuse from IP to sub-system to SoC. Another requirement is verification throughput for design with considerably more analog, mixed signal and low power content. Finally, one has to devise verification techniques and flows that can cater to the security and safety requirements of modern IoT applications.

Formal took a while to become mainstream. The rise of Apps in Formal seems to have accelerated this adoption. What’s your view on this?

Yes, I do agree that Apps has considerably accelerated the pace of adoption of formal. Traditionally, formal tools have been developed and used by formal PhDs and experts. The main charter and motivation of these experts was to solve the coolest and hardest problems in formal verification. It was only after some time that both sides (developers and users) started realizing that formal can be used in a much more practical and usable way by engineers to solve specific problems. This lead to the development of various formal apps which greatly enabled the mainstream usage of formal.

This is the 3rd edition of DVCon India. What are your expectations from the conference?

I am expecting to attend keynotes, technical papers and panel discussions that give me an understanding of some the latest work in the domain of design and verification of IPs, sub-systems and SoCs. In addition, I am looking forward to the opportunity to network with some of my peers from the industry and academia.

Thank you Alok!


Come join us in this exciting journey to contribute, collaborate, connect & celebrate @ DVCon India 2016!

Disclaimer: “The postings on this blog are my own and not necessarily reflect the views of Aricent”

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Quick chat with Sushil : Keynote speaker, DVCon India 2016

Sushil Gupta
A very famous urdu verse that translates  translates to “When I started I was alone, slowly others joined and a caravan formed” truly describes the plethora of challenges in SoC verification that continues to abound as the design complexity marches north. It started with growing logic on the silicon and moved to performance before power took over. While we still juggle up to handle the PPA implications, time to market pressure with cost effective secure customized solutions further add enough spice to the problem.

Sushil Gupta, Group Director in the Verification group at Synopsys covers these problems & potential solutions in his keynote titled “Today’s SoC Verification Challenges: Mobile and Beyond” on Day 2 of DVCon India 2016. Sushil joined Synopsys in 2015 as part of acquisition of Atrenta. He has 30 years of industry experience which spans various roles in engineering management and leadership in EDA and VLSI Design companies. Here is a quick excerpt of the conversation with Sushil around this topic –

Sushil your keynote topic focuses on challenges in verification associated with the next generation of SoCs. Tell us more about it?

We have seen the chip design industry shift its focus from computers and networking into System on Chips (SoC) for mobility – smartphones, tablets, and other consumer devices. The next wave of SoCs go beyond mobility into IoT, automotive, robotics, etc. These SoCs integrate hundreds of functions into a single chip and a complete software stack with drivers, operating system, etc.. The result is 10X increase in verification complexity in continually shrinking market windows. My talk focuses on these challenges and how verification solutions must scale to address them effectively.

Reuse of IP/Subsystems is the key trend with SoCs today. Do you think that reuse from third party add to challenges in verification? If yes, how?

IP/sub-system reuse (both third party and in-house) helps accelerate the integration of multiple functions into a single chip. However, these IP/sub-systems can come from multiple sources with heterogeneous design and verification flows. The resulting SoCs are extremely complex with  millions of lines of RTL and testbench, protocols, assertions, clock and power domains, and billions of cycles of OS boot.

Do you think progress in verification methodologies & flows have reached to a point where consolidation is key to allow verification engineer use the best of each? Any specific trends that you would like to highlight on this?

Integrated verification platforms are key to verification convergence. Verification now extends beyond functional verification into low power verification, debug automation, static  and formal verification, early software bring-up and emerging challenges with safety, security and privacy. This requires not only best-in-class verification tools and engines, but also native integrations between the tools to enable seamless transitions and faster convergence.

Sushil you have had a significant stint with formal at Atrenta. What are your thoughts on adoption of Formal coming to mainstream? How does the trend looks moving forward?

Formal is fast becoming mainstream because it can catch bugs that are otherwise very difficult to detect. Advancements in performance, debug and capacity of formal verification tools has enabled formal to become an integral part of a comprehensive SoC verification flow. The emergence of formal ‘Apps’ for clock and reset domains, low power, connectivity, sequential equivalence, coverage exclusions, etc. has enabled a broad range of design and verification engineers to benefit from formal verification without the need to be a formal “expert”.   

This is the 3rd edition of DVCon India. What are your expectations from the conference?

Speaking from my own experience having started my career with TI India in 1986, India has a very rich design and verification expertise. I hope to learn about the latest challenges and innovations in verification and look forward to working with our customers and partners on new breakthroughs.

Thank you Sushil!

Join us on Day 2 (Sept 16) of DVCon India 2016  at Leela Palace, Bangalore to attend this keynote and other exciting topics.

Disclaimer: “The postings on this blog are my own and not necessarily reflect the views of Aricent”