At the upcoming DVCon (in San Jose, CA February 25-28), Cadence will cover all aspects of our verification technologies and methodologies (full list of Cadence-sponsored events is here). However, Team Verify would like to alert users of Cadence Incisive formal and multi-engine tools, apps, and assertion-based verification (ABV) to the following papers and posters focused on this domain.
* Session 2, Tuesday Feb. 26, 9-10:30am features two papers:
Paper 2.1, "Overcoming AXI Asynchronous Bridge Verification Challenges with AXI Assertion-Based Verification IP (ABVIP) and Formal Datapath Scoreboards". Speaker: Chris Komar of Cadence; Authors: Bochra Elmeray - ST-Ericsson and Joerg Mueller of Cadence
Paper 2.3, "How to Succeed Against Increasing Pressure - Automated Techniques for Unburdening Verification Engineers". Speaker: James S. Pascoe - STMicroelectronics; Authors: James S. Pascoe - STMicroelectronics, Steve Hobbs - Cadence, Pierre Kuhn - STMicroelectronics. (Note: while it's not clear from the title, this paper covers the "Coverage Unreachablity" app running on Incisive Enterprise Verifier (IEV) - more on this "app" below.)
* Session 3, Tuesday Feb. 26, 9-10:30am (Unfortunately a conflict with paper 2.1 - flip a coin?)
Paper 3.1, "How to Kill 4 Birds with 1 Stone: In a Highly Configurable Design Using Formal to Validate Legal Configurations, Find Design Bugs, and Improve Testbench and Software Specifications"
Speaker: Saurabh Shrivastava - Xilinx, Inc.; Authors: Saurabh Shrivastava, Kavita Dangi, Mukesh Sharma - Xilinx, Inc, Darrow Chu - Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
* Poster session on Tuesday from 10:30-11:30am
1P.6, "A Reusable, Scalable Formal App for Verifying any Configuration of 3D IC Connectivity" Speaker: Daniel Han - Xilinx, Inc., Authors: Daniel Han, Walter Sze, Benjamin Ting - Xilinx, Inc., Darrow Chu - Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
(Ed. Note.: the best part about the poster session is you can easily interact with the authors - asking them questions on the fly in a way that would be awkward if they were presenting the paper in a lecture format.)
* The Cadence booth at the free expo on Tuesday & Wednesday Feb. 26-27, 3:30- 6:30pm each day
Among the other demos available, Team Verify experts will be on hand to show you our Coverage Unreachability app, one of a number of free apps available to users of IFV and IEV. [Ed. Note.: What do we mean by the term "app" in this context? Verification apps in general put the focus on "problems vs. EDA technology" such that a verification app is a well-documented tool capability or methodology focused on a specific, high-value problem. In this instance - with IFV or IEV as the platform -- the given problem is more efficiently solved using formal-based methods and/or a combination of formal, simulation, and metric-driven techniques than simulation-based methods alone. Finally, the barrier to creating the necessary properties and/or the need for ABV expertise is significantly reduced through either automated property generation built-in to the tool(s) or pre-packaged properties (provided).]
* Bonus: A free lunch on "Best Practices in Verification Planning" Wednesday Feb. 27!
On the Wednesday of DVCon Cadence is hosting an expert panel on "Best Practices in Verification Planning". Panel moderator and R&D Fellow Mike Stellfox will kickoff this important discussion on how creating and executing effective verification plans can be a challenging mix of art and science that can go sideways despite the best efforts of engineers and managers. Note that this won't be confined to RTL verification planning only -- the panel also includes experts on analog-mixed signal verification and formal analysis. Specifically, the CEO of long time Cadence partner Oski Technology, Vigyan Singhal, will be on the panel to share how advanced planning can greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of formal analysis and ABV. (Recall that at the last DAC Vigyan's team successfully verified a sight unseen DUT from NVIDIA in 72 hours. The key their success was resisting the enormous temptation to jump in and start running IEV, and instead taking a whole evening to thoroughly understand the design and scope out the most critical areas for analysis.)
We look forward to seeing you in-person soon!
Joe Hupcey III
for Team Verify
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/teamverify, @teamverify
And on Facebook too: www.facebook.com/cdnsteamverify
Reference Links
Comprehensive list of Cadence-sponsored events & papers
Images from last year's conference to give you an idea of what it's like, in case you have never been to a DVCon before.
DVCon 2012 video playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66DB89BCDB6E841A
60 second highlights video from DVCon 2012: http://youtu.be/qEzIUX9VvOc