Industry Articles

By Sami Maisniemi, Nokia
December 14, 2006 -- edadesignline.com

Introduction

Nokia utilizes the Open Core Protocol (OCP) as a standard interconnection architecture for its systems. So far there has not been a unified verification methodology for interconnections available. As a consequence, there was an obvious demand for a new verification package that fulfills the following requirements:

• The package verifies the compatibility of the interconnection with the OCP standard.
• The package can be installed with minimal efforts without modifying the existing verification environment.
• The package can be configured with minimal efforts without access to the source code.
• The package is compatible with the existing design and verification flows.
• No previous knowledge of assertion-based verification or hardware property languages is required.
• No additional EDA tools are required.
• The package must be cost-effective in terms of maintenance and support.

The purpose of the assertion-based verification (ABV) method is to convert functional features of a specification into explicit assertions that define the behavior of logic over time. The hardware property languages differ remarkably from the hardware description and verification languages. Instead of implementing a test bench, the hardware property languages are utilized to implement assertions. The property specification language (PSL) is a vendor independent hardware property language that has been standardized by the IEEE. The purpose of the PSL is not to replace, but to complement the existing verification methodologies like VHDL and Verilog test benches. The goal is to improve both verification quality and efficiency.