Functional Verification

Catalog description

Introduce concepts, methods, and technology for effective functional verification of modern electronic systems. CMPEN 475 Functional Verification (3)Verifying design correctness of increasingly complex system-on-chip designs poses a major challenge to the semiconductor industry. Functional or logic errors in a chip design that are not identified early in the design phase can dramatically increase a project's overall cost and schedule. Further, design verification is consuming an ever-increasing portion of IC development time and cost. As much as 70% of effort in a complex IC design project is now attributed to verification. This course will cover five key aspects of verification: an introduction to verification; a detailed description of simulation-based dynamic verification; formal verification; verification methodologies and advanced techniques; and case studies. First, the course will place verification in the context of the chip design process and introduce the verification cycle. Then, it will cover essential methodology principles and introduce the first hands-on example. It will also delve into various topics in dynamic verification, including the basic constructs of stimuli, monitors, checkers, observations categories, assertions, and test benches. Various case studies on actual industry and research designs will be provided. The course will be supplemented by lab-assignments that provide hands-on experience to experiment with methodologies taught in lectures.