Mentor Blogs

Verification Academy Adds Major New Technical Resource The Verification Academy adds another major methodology cookbook to focus on effective coverage adoption.  The Coverage Cookbook describes the different types of coverage that are available to track your verification process progress, how to create a functional coverage model from a specification, and provides examples to implement functional … Read More

OVM, UCDB, Coverage, Coverage Closure, Accellera, UCIS, Harry Foster, UVM, IEEE 1800, Coverage Cookbook, Verification Academy, functional coverage

A new style takes center stage It was Fashion Week in Portland, Oregon in early October.  And while the thought of Portland and fashion might not be believable to many in the world, especially those who look to the design houses of Paris or Milan, it was.  What struck me was the blend of fashion with high tech this year.  Intel took the opportunity to roll out its fashion inspired campaign (dressing … Read More

UVM, UVM Cookbook, OVM, Verification, Verification Academy

Live & In-Person at DAC 2012! Verification Academy, the brain child of Dr. Harry Foster, Chief Verification Scientist at Mentor Graphics, was live from the Design Automation Conference tradeshow floor this year.  Harry is pictured to the right giving an update on his popular verification survey from the DAC tradeshow floor. The Verification Academy, predominantly a web-based resource is a popular … Read More

Verification Academy, UVM Express, Tech Design Forum, ACE, AMS, Thales, UPF, UVM, ABV, Coverage Closure, iTBA, Low Power, DAC, OVM, ARM, Assertion-Based Verification, Formal, Doulos, Verification Trends

Is my car trying to tell me something? This past Friday was the beginning of a two day internal functional verification meeting at Mentor Graphics corporate headquarters on Intelligent Testbench Automation (iTBA).  (Mentor’s iTBA product, Questa inFact is hot and getting hotter.) After getting to my car to return home at the end of the first day, I was thinking that the large interest in this technology … Read More

UVM, Tipping Point, Veloce, inFact, Intelligent Testbench Automation, Crossing the Chasam, Questa, SoC, iTBA, OVM

IEEE Announces Revision to IEEE 1666™ – Adds Transaction-Level Modeling Support A significant step forward to address standards for advanced system-on-chip (SoC) designs has taken place by the IEEE.  The IEEE announced the new revision of the SystemC standard, known as IEEE 1666™-2011, has been approved.  While it is a revision of the current SystemC standard, IEEE 1666™-2005, the major new feature … Read More

SystemC, TLM, Accellera, 1666, OVM, TLM 1.0, TLM 2.0, UVM, OSCI, Verification Academy

Legacy’s Luster Lost As a follow-on to my last blog, where I shared information about Harry Foster speaking live about the research he has been reporting on the last year and where I noted legacy might hold some back, I was going to finish on some of the work we have done at Mentor Graphics to move forward while trying to keep some of those held back by legacy, whole. Buy why this title?  For some, … Read More

VHS, Verification, VIP-TSC, betamax, e, Accellera, UVM, OVM

Is Legacy Holding You Back? Harry Foster, Mentor’s Verification Chief Scientist, will take center stage to give live presentations on the pressing SoC verification issues as he highlights recent research he has been reporting on in his numerous blogs.  The first event will be held in San Jose, CA USA (18 October 2011) and the second event will be held in Reading, UK (15 November 2011). Harry has been … Read More

VMM, VIP-TSC, Accellera, UVM, OVM

Historical Perspective In my early days of standards development, I was intrigued how a standard went from the development phase to use phase.  New standards were heralded with great fanfare but were also followed very quickly with books and other material to allow the “mere mortal” to understand what the IEEE standards prose meant and how best to use it.  Everyone had their favorite VHDL book and … Read More

VITAL, VHDL, VMM, OVM, Accellera, UVM, UVM World, OVM World

User Adoption of OVM Featured; Views on UVM Discussed The Mentor Graphics user group meeting, User-2-User, in Santa Clara is all set.  U2U will be held on 26 April 2011 at the Santa Clara Marriott and one of the tracks will feature functional verification after keynote presentations by Mentor’s CEO, Wally Rhines and Xilinx’s CTO, Ivo Bolsens. Registration for the event is open and is fee-free.  U2U … Read More

Functional Verification, OVM, Accellera, UVM, VIP, U2U

Wally Rhines DVCon 2011 Keynote Highlights Survey on Verification Languages OK, maybe it is not the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but Wally Rhines’ DVCon 2011 keynote did have a slide titled “SystemVerilog in the Ascendancy.”  It is not a word I see or use much.  In fact, Google labs’ “Book Ngram Viewer” shows ascendancy has been in decline since around 1825. It struck me that the title was tending … Read More

OVM, DVCon, VHDL, Wally Rhines, UVM, Verification

The hot news in mil/aero this week centers on UVM, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) released yesterday by Accellera. The electronics industry organization, which is focused on electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) standards, has approved version 1.0 of its UVM standard for verifying integrated circuit (IC) designs. Accellera’s Verification IP (VIP) Technical … Read More

UVM, Universal Verification Methodology, Milaero, Design Automation, Open Verification Methodology, OVM, TSC, Accellera, IC, Mentor, Mentor Graphics, integrated circuit, Mentor.com, Mil-Aero, electronic design automation, IP, intellectual property, John Lenyo, Verification IP (VIP) Technical Subcommittee (TSC), VIP

Standard Co-Emulation Modeling Interface (SCE-MI) 2.1 Improves Verification Productivity The Accellera Interface Technical Subcommittee (ITC) completed version 2.1 of the standard used to interface software and hardware-based verification technology.  With SCE-MI, models can be developed for simulation to run in an emulation environment and visa versa. The major addition to SCE-MI 2.1 is support … Read More

UVM, DVCon, EDSFair, Accellera, OVM, SCE-MI

As the saying goes: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. With that said, I am excited to announce a new module focused on Verification Planning, which has been one of the Verification Academy’s most-requested subjects for new content. The new Verification Planning module is delivered by our subject matter expert, who literally wrote the book on the subject, Peet James. The goal of verification planning … Read More

Functional Verification, OVM, Assertion-Based Verification, Verification Methodology, UVM, Verification Academy

Mentor/Synopsys Collaboration Bears Fruit Two weeks back I shared information in a blog on collaboration between Mentor Graphics and Synopsys to reduce the number of candidate register packages being considered by the Accellera Verification IP (VIP) Technical Subcommittee (TSC).  Mentor withdrew its candidate when all our requirements were able to be addressed in an update to the Synopsys RAL candidate. As … Read More

OVM, ral, Accellera, UVM, VIP-TSC

Companion OVM Cookbook Examples Kit also offered for download Several months ago, the OVM Cookbook and the Examples Kit were made available for online use at the Verification Academy.  This proved to be a great help to accelerate the skill level of new OVM users.  Given the number of new projects that have deployed OVM and the number of new engineers that now need to use OVM, there is increased demand … Read More

OVM, Verification Academy, cookbook, Verification Methodology