Verification Principles

Abstract

This chapter surveys general principles of verification and establishes a framework for designing testbenches based on two questions—Does it work? and Are we done?

Functionally verifying a design means comparing the designer’s intent with observed behavior to determine their equivalence. We consider a design verified when, to everyone’s satisfaction, it performs according to the designer’s intent. This basic principle often gets lost in the discussion of testbenches, assertions, debuggers, simulators, and all the other paraphernalia used in modern verification flows. To tell if a design works, you must compare it with some known reference that represents the designer’s intent. Keep this in mind as you read the rest of this book. Every testbench has some kind of reference model and a means to compare the function of the design with the reference.