siddhakarana: October 2015

As the holiday season kicked off in India, the antennas of my brain tickled to intercept between what is going around and relate it to verification. In past, I have made an attempt to correlate off topic subjects with verification around this time every year. Dropping the mainstream sometimes helps as it gives you a different perspective and a reason to think beyond normal, to think out of the box, to see solutions in different context and apply it to yours, in this case verification! The problem statement being – driving verification closure with growing complexity and shrinking schedules.

Before I move forward, let me share the context of these holidays. This is the time in India when festivities are at their peak for few weeks. Celebration is in the air and the diversity in the culture makes it even more fascinating. People from all over India celebrate this season and relate it to various mythological stories while worshipping different deities. The common theme across is that in the war of good and evil, good prevails finally! What is interesting though are the different stories associated with each culture detailing these wars between good and evil. In the process of growth of the evil and the evolution of good to fight it, both tend to acquire different weapons to attack as well as defend. And when the arsenal at both ends is equally equipped, the launch-pad becomes a critical factor in arriving to a decision. Possibly, that is another reason why different deities ride different animals and some of these stories talk about those magical chariots that kind of made the difference to the war.

So how does this relate to verification?

As verification engineers our quest with bugs amidst growing complexity has made us acquire different skills. We started off with directed verification using HDLs/C/scripts and soon moved to Constrained random verification. Next we picked different coverage metrics i.e. functional, code coverage and assertions. As we marched further, we added formal apps to take care of the housekeeping items that every project needs. Almost a new tool/flow keeps adding every couple of years in line with the Moore’s law J. And now if we look back, the definition of verification as a non-overlapping concern (functional only) in the ASIC design cycle few decades ago is all set to cross roads with the then perceived orthogonal concerns (clock, power, security and software). While we continue to add a new flow, tool or methodology for each of these challenges that are rocking the verification boat, what hasn’t changed much in all these years is the platform that the verification teams continue to use. Yes, new tools and techniques are required but are these additions bringing the next leap that is needed or are they just coping up with the task at hand? Is it time to think different? Time to think beyond normal? Time to think out of the box? And if YES what could be a potential direction?

This is where I come back to the mythological stories wherein when the arsenal wasn’t enough; it was the magical chariot that did the trick! Yes, maybe the answer lies in bringing the change in the platform – our SIMULATORS – the workhorse of verification! Interestingly, the answers do not need to be invented. There are alternate solutions available in form VIRTUAL PROTOTYPING or using HARDWARE ACCELERATORS/EMULATORS for RTL simulations. Adopting these solutions would give an edge on both the bugs causing menace as well as the competition! And for those who think it is costly to adopt, a lost market window for the product could be even costlier!!!

As Harry Foster mentioned in his keynote at DVCon India 2015 – It’s about time to bring in the paradigm shift from “Increasing cycles of verification TO maximising verification per cycles”. He also quoted Henry Ford, the legend who founded Ford Motor Company and revolutionized transportation and American industry.