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”