Verification Methodologies

Summary

This chapter introduced functional verification and motivated the need for an effective functional verification methodology. A set of verification metrics were introduced to provide a means for contrasting and motivating the introduction of new verification methodologies. Directed test based verification, constrained random based verification, coverage driven verification, and autonomous verification environments were discussed and the introduction of each new methodology was motivated by the verification metrics discussed in this chapter.

This chapter strongly emphasized that the ever increasing complexity of verifying new digital systems can only be managed by increasing productivity; and this increase in productivity is only possible through automation, reuse, and by moving to higher levels of abstraction. Coverage driven verification provides the best combination of all available approaches for achieving a good balance between the effort required to build a verification infrastructure and completing the project on time and before the deadline.

Chapter 3 describes the verification environment architecture that is used for applying coverage driven verification.