I am excited to share my latest paper which was recently published at DVCon 2017 in San Jose, California. The full title is:
"Improving Constrained Random Testing by Achieving Simulation Verification Goals through Objective Functions, Rewinding and Dynamic Seed Manipulation"
Abstract
Constrained Random simulation is so critical to modern verification environments that it is a major component of the SystemVerilog language itself. This paper proposes a method that improves how UVM Constrained Random simulations are run. By abstracting the purpose of a simulation to be achieving “Objective Functions” (nominally coverage goals), it is possible to have the simulation autonomously explore deep possibilities from multiple points in time of a standard UVM testbench governed by feedback. This method has a number of benefits including: faster automated coverage closure, an efficient final stimulus solution and proposed higher quality of coverage.
I'm honored to share that my paper:
"Design Patterns by Example for SystemVerilog Verification Environments Enabled by SystemVerilog 1800-2012"
was awarded Best Paper at the Design and Verification Conference (DVCon) 2016. The link to the final paper is now available.
The SystemVerilog bind command allows for adding new functionality to a module. Typically, it is used to add new checking to a RTL block.
I wrote the example code (available on GitHub here) below to demonstrate a feature of bind that allows the binded module to parameterize itself based on where it is being used. When you think about what bind is actually doing it starts to make sense.
I was trying to get a metric for the performance penalty of simulating with and without a model parameter. The parameter was believed to be responsible for a performance difference of 10% to 15%, but after looking at the data more I became intrigued. Since no one had really deep dived into this and shown more than a few data points on performance it was time to get serious about simulation performance comparisons.
I use Mentor Questa a lot and when I am at work the visual lag of interacting with the GUI is almost imperceptible. But, when I am working remotely that visual lag is, of course, more noticeable. One possible solution that reduces the lag considerably compared to VNC, NX, or Windows Remote Desktop is to run Questa natively on your local computer.
The first problem you will run into is that Questa is only officially supported on Redhat and SUSE Linux. (It is also supported on Microsoft Windows too, but who really does serious engineering work on Windows?) So, if Questa is only supported on two commercial Linux variants are we stuck on installing Redhat at home from the corporate install? Fortunately, no.
You can install Mentor Questa on Ubuntu Linux. I'll go through installing it on Ubuntu 12.04.3 64bit.
