Validation Solution using Unified Database

Abstract

Nowadays the verification of very complex circuits requires the need of various verification tools, designed by various vendors and the use of different verification technologies. The Unified Database provides a (API) known as Application Programming Interface that enables the sharing of coverage as well as Debug related data across different verification platforms such as simulators and accelerators. Using the coverage data it enables verification engineers to achieve their required goal and able to help them make plans and change plans for the verification of complex designs. The growing complexity designs required the share of coverage data among different tools to achieve verification closure. Using the API it is possible to write Checkers scripts for post processing which can increase the speed of the Debug Cycle. The API also helps in generating the data in more different formats such as (.txt), (.vdb), the vdb format is the most commonly used format and it is generated generally using Synopsys tool known as Verdi. The advantage of vdb format is that, it can be merged with other vdb’s files which helps in coverage calculations. The reason for using the Unified Database is to preserve the coverage data across the lifetime of the project. The First step in going for offline validation is to collect all the test output log files followed by the creation of uploader script as per the requirements. Then using the uploader scripts to generate a unified database of all the test output logs. Then writing a coverage script or checker script and providing the generated unified database as an input to get the required coverage in the desired format.