With the alarming number of first pass silicon functional failures, it
has become necessary for all levels of engineering companies to
understand the verification process. This book is organized to address
zation. The book is targeted at three somewhat distinct audiences:
• Executives. The people with their jobs on the line for increasing
shareholder value.
• Project, design, and verification managers. The people responsible
for making sure each design goes out on time and
perfect!
• Verification and design engineers. The innovators responsible
for making sure that the project actually succeeds.
The book is divided into three parts corresponding to its three
audiences. The level of technical depth increases as the book proceeds.
Part I gives an overview of the functional verification process. It
also includes descriptions of the tools that are used in this flow and
the people that enable it all. After outlining functional verification,
Part I describes how the proper application of metric-driven techniques
can enable more productive, more predictable and higher quality
verification projects. Part I is targeted at the executive. It is designed
to enable executives to ask appropriate educated questions to accurately
measure and control the flow of a project.
Part I also holds value for project managers and verification engineers.
It provides an overall view of the entire chip design process
from a verification perspective. The chapters on a typical verification
project and the overview of verification technologies will be
of use to entry level verification engineers as well. This part of the
book also provides a unique viewpoint on why management is
asking for process data and how that data might be used.Part II describes the various process flows used in verification. It
delves into how these flows can be automated, and what metrics can
be measured to accurately gauge the progress of each process. Part II
is targeted at design and verification project managers. The emphasis
is on how to use metrics within the context of standardized
processes to react effectively to bumps in the project’s execution.
Part III’s audience is the design and verification engineering team. It
focuses on the actual verification processes to be implemented and
executed. This section of the book is divided with respect to the
various verification technologies. Each chapter on a given technology
is further subdivided into sections on how to plan effectively,
and how to track metrics to closure.
Entire books have been written on implementing verification using
the technologies discussed in Part III. We will not reiterate what
those excellent volumes have already stated, nor do we intend to
reinvent the wheel (yet, we are engineers after all). Implementation
details will be discussed when they will make the metric-driven
techniques discussed more effective.
Part IV contains various case studies and commentaries from experts
in the metric-driven verification field.
The various parts of the book can also be described as a progression
of process abstractions. The layers of abstractions are “Observational
Processes,” “Container Processes,” and “Implementation
Processes.”