Verification IP – How a digital hardware is verified

by Rajesh Kumar
Rajesh Kumar

In this era of digital world everyday new digital products, hardware and software are launched by the different companies, the new hardware which is an upgraded version of its predecessor always have some more design or functional quality, that’s why it is the upgraded version. Now come to the point, how it is verified that the new hardware or the software is performing better than its predecessor in design and the functionality?

Not comes the concept of Verification IP ( Verification Intellectual Property), verification IPs are the software suits specially developed for the design and functionality verification of different hardware chips such as USB, PCIE, ASIC, UART, FPGA, Ethernet, DDR, SDIO, SATA and many more. Verification IPs are developed using different chip design level languages and methodologies such Openvera, Systemverilog (UVM, OVM, VMM), Verilog, SystemC, VHDL and some others.

Some of the most popular VIPs (Verification IPs) are:

USB VIP– for both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 there are two different VIPs, USB 2.0 verification IP is a comprehensive solution for the pre-silicon functional verification of designs complaint to the USB 2.0 or 1.1 and OTG supplement to USB 2.0 revision 1.0a. This product allows the verification engineers to quickly verify the functionality of USB 2.0 complaint devices. USB 3.0 VIP is also known as super speed USB VIP because of the high data transfer speed of USB 3.0 complaint devices. The data transfer speed of super speed USB is up to 5GBPS and also provides to the earlier generation USB devices.

PCI Express VIP– PCI Express conforming to PCIE Gen3/ Gen2/ Gen1 is the most widely accepted and proven solution for pre-silicon functional verification of PCI Express complaint devices in native Verilog and SystemVerilog. The availability of PCIE test suits allow the designers to focus only on the design for unique and better looks rather than the functionality.

SATA VIP– this product is used for the functional verification of all SATA complaint devices.

DDR VIP– like USBs, DDR2 and DDR3 also have different verification IPs for the verification.

Ethernet VIP– this product is used for the verification of functionality of 100/40/10/1G Ethernet designs.

UART VIP– used for the verification of functionality of UART complaint devices.

SAS Verification IP– used for the functional verification of SAS complaint devices.

Some other verification IPs are AXI VIP, AHB VIP, APB VIP, ATAPI VIP, Interlaken VIP, SPI 4.2 VIP, I2C VIP, SMBus VIP, MIPI HIS VIP, SDIO VIP, PCI-X VIP, SR-IOV VIP and others.

Most of the above said verification IP software products are available with an option of source code in systemverilog (UVM/OVM/VMM) and verilog.

Some of the top companies offering VIP software products, hardware design and verification services are:

·          nSys Inc.

·          Cadence Design Systems

·          Design & Reuse

·           Accellera Organization Inc.

·          Synopsys

·          Mentor Graphics

and some others.

These all software suits costs a lot but some are available as a free evaluation version, such as nSys USB 3.0 VIP software suit is available as free evaluation for the qualified users.

About Author

Author is having a good knowledge of Verification IPs and services such as FPGA Design Services. Author recommends buying Verification IPs only after its manual testing.

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Article submitted Thursday, June 23, 2011 & read 277 times.

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