OneSpin Solutions Enhances 360 MV for Safe, Exhaustive 4-State X-Analysis and X-Verification

New 4-State Formal Analysis and Verification Capability Ensures Absence of X-Related Design Errors and RTL-to-Netlist Mismatches Design Automation Conference 2010

MUNICH & SUNNYVALE, Calif.-- June 7, 2010--OneSpin Solutions, an EDA company that provides innovative formal assertion-based verification solutions, today announced that it has enhanced its flagship product 360 MV to perform 4-state X-analysis and X-verification. This enhancement enables safe, exhaustive analysis of unknown, undefined, and “don’t care” signal values (X’s) and their propagation through a design. In contrast to simulation, it enables users to safely uncover all locations and conditions of unintended, dangerous X-propagation that lead to data corruption or errors in control paths. Moreover, 360 MV’s 4-state analysis does not suffer from the X-optimism that plagues 4-state RTL simulation, which results in incorrect coverage information, potential masking of design bugs and mismatches between RTL and netlist simulation – sources of functional errors that are often extremely challenging and time-consuming to find. OneSpin will show 360 MV’s 4-state formal analysis for the first time in public at a free verification tutorial in Booth #1311 at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in Anaheim, Calif., June 13-18, 2010. “For example, designers can now easily determine whether given registers can safely be left uninitialized – to reduce chip area – without breaking their design. 360 MV ensures the X-robustness of designs before synthesis, saving effort in late gate-level simulation.”

.360 MV’s support of 4-state logic extends the 2-state logic (0,1) commonly used in formal analysis to include X and Z (floating values). 360 MV automatically identifies all design signals that can become X, and enables designers to use X-aware constructs – such as “$isunknown” and “===” – to write simple assertions to fully explore the propagation of X’s through their design. Failing assertions are debugged using 360 MV’s RootCauseAnalyzer environment. Its waveform viewer, SVA debugger, fan-in viewer, RTL value annotation, and driver tracing afford full visibility of X’s and full traceability of X propagation in the design, unlike 2-state formal analysis.

“360 MV allows users to fully exploit the use of X’s for RTL verification and synthesis optimization without the pitfalls and risks of X-related bugs,” Michael Siegel, OneSpin’s VP Product Marketing, explained. “For example, designers can now easily determine whether given registers can safely be left uninitialized – to reduce chip area – without breaking their design. 360 MV ensures the X-robustness of designs before synthesis, saving effort in late gate-level simulation.”

Availability

The new enhancement is available now in OneSpin’s 360 MV.

OneSpin at DAC 2010

OneSpin will exhibit 360 MV in Booth #1311 at DAC 2010 in Anaheim, Calif., June 13-18. Besides the complimentary 4-state formal analysis tutorial, three additional complimentary assertion-based verification tutorials will show engineers (1) the use of formal coverage analysis to automatically detect verification holes, (2) gap-free processor verification, and (3) progress in the exhaustive verification of complex arithmetic. OneSpin will show these tutorials each hour. Contact info@onespin-solutions.com for more information and to schedule private meetings at DAC.

About 360 MV

OneSpin’s 360 MV product family is the most comprehensive formal assertion-based verification (ABV) solution for RTL designs. In the past four years, 360 MV has been selected four times as one of the industry's most innovative and significant products for functional RTL verification. It covers the broadest range of formal ABV applications for formal verification starters, experienced users and experts – from fully automatic RTL checks and powerful assertion-based verification all the way to OneSpin’s patented, highest quality gap-free verification. For more information, please visit http://www.onespin-solutions.com.

About OneSpin Solutions

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) company OneSpin Solutions delivers innovative formal verification solutions that ease and speed the functional verification of complex ASIC and FPGA designs. Market-leading telecommunications, automotive, consumer electronics, and embedded systems companies rely on OneSpin's award-winning products to substantially reduce verification effort and achieve the industry’s highest-possible verification quality. For further information please visit http://www.onespin-solutions.com/ or email info@onespin-solutions.com.