C Based Stimulus for UVM
On-demand Web Seminar
Abstract
Many hardware blocks are designed to interact with software using memory mapped registers. In the final implementation, the system level software, running on a CPU, reads and writes these registers via a bus interface on the hardware block. With UVM sequence based stimulus, accesses to these registers are made via a bus agent, sometimes in a directed way that emulates software accesses, sometimes using constrained random stimulus. This seminar describes a techniquein which C stimulus can be applied to the DUT via an existing UVM testbench that contains one or more bus agents. The approach used is to add a C register read/write API for use by C source code, which calls tasks in a SystemVerilog package via the SystemVerilog DPI mechanism to enable the C to make register accesses via the UVM testbench bus agents. The API enables c code to be compiled and then run on the host workstation during the simulation of a UVM environment.
Duration: 31:44
Details
Overview
Many hardware blocks are designed to interact with software using memory mapped registers. In the final implementation, the system level software, running on a CPU, reads and writes these registers via a bus interface on the hardware block. With UVM sequence based stimulus, accesses to these registers are made via a bus agent, sometimes in a directed way that emulates software accesses, sometimes using constrained random stimulus. This seminar describes a technique in which C stimulus can be applied to the DUT via an existing UVM testbench that contains one or more bus agents. The approach used is to add a C register read/write API for use by C source code, which calls tasks in a SystemVerilog package via the SystemVerilog DPI mechanism to enable the C to make register accesses via the UVM testbench bus agents. The API enables c code to be compiled and then run on the host workstation during the simulation of a UVM environment.
What You Will Learn
- Review of a register-level testbench architecture
- Tradeoffs associated with C stimulus alternatives
- How to extend your environment to accept C stimulus
- How to use the c_stimulus_pkg to use C code as stimulus in your environment
About the Presenter
Tom Fitzpatrick
Verification Technologist
Tom Fitzpatrick is currently a Verification Technologist at Mentor Graphics Corp. where he brings over two decades of design and verification experience to bear on developing advanced verification methodologies, particularly using SystemVerilog, and educating users on how to adopt them. He has been actively involved in the standardization of SystemVerilog, starting with his days as a member of the Superlog language design team at Co-Design Automation through its standardization via Accellera and then the IEEE, where he has served as chair of the 1364 Verilog Working Group, as well as a Technical Champion on the SystemVerilog P1800 Working Group. At Mentor Graphics, Tom was one of the original designers of the Advanced Verification Methodology (AVM), and later the Open Verification Methodology (OVM), and is the editor of Verification Horizons, a quarterly newsletter with approximately 40,000 subscribers. He is a charter member and key contributor to the Accellera Verification IP Technical Subcomittee. He has published multiple articles and technical papers about SystemVerilog, verification methodologies, assertion-based verification, functional coverage, formal verification and other functional verification topics.
Who Should View
Design and Verification Engineers and Managers
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