Verification Language Migration Services

Designers have struggled with verification for years, most recently creating their own high-level testbenches using a variety of languages.  These languages introduced performance issues since they had to be used in co-simulation with established hardware simulators.  Today, the introduction and adoption of the SystemVerilog standard (IEEE 1800™) allows all groups to share on high-level language through the entire design and verification process.

SystemVerilog provides a single, standard language for both design and verification, cutting the HDL/HVL workload by as much as one-half.  Mentor Graphics has taken this to the next level with its Questa™ verification platform that supports SystemVerilog, SystemC, and PSL in a single kernel.  But although the benefits associated with adoption of SystemVerilog are clear, it introduces new challenges to preserve and migrate the legacy investment in verification code and testbenches that exists.

Fortunately, migration is a once-and-done event.  So developing in-house migration expertise doesn't usually make sense.  Migration tasks can be easily and economically outsourced, freeing designers to concentrate on product development.  Mentor Consulting specializes in migration services to facilitate testbench migration from e or Vera® to SystemVerilog.    Our consultants are fluent in all of these languages and have developed a proven migration process.  They understand the concerns and tradeoffs associated with migration.  Our pragmatic approach ensures the migrated testbench is as good an architecture as the original - or better.

Mentor Consulting Verification Language Migration Services are designed to incrementally migrate sections of the legacy testbench.  As each section is migrated, it is carefully checked for accuracy before proceeding.  All legacy metrics are preserved first and foremost throughout the process, ensuring complete confidence that the migrated testbench is as good as, or better than, the legacy version.  More details on our migration process can be found in our Verification Language Migration Services datasheet.

There is often concern about the level of effort required for a migration project.  Because no two testbenches are the same, it is impossible to provide a generic guideline.  However, Mentor Consulting can provide a quote for a translation project after a brief analysis of the existing code.

For more information on this subject, review the other resources available in the right margin of this page.