Bugs are a part of life in any complex software development project. This is no different in the testbench development world.
Most bugs get discovered eventually. The question is: At which stage of the game are they discovered, and at what price?
Let's explore the option of testing parts of your testbench early on, at the lowest level you can leverage unit testing. This is an approach that has been successfully adopted in the general software development world. It consists of isolated, autonomous tests that target a very small piece of code, in order to test a specific behavior. Often these tests are just applied on methods.
The next question is: What does it take to adapt unit testing to the testbench development effort?
Fortunately we are in luck. You can learn about unit testing for testbench development in two upcoming venues.
- On December 12, 2013 in our webinar: "Testing the Testbench"
- On March 5, 2014 at a DV Con paper presentation
Doug Gibson of Hewlett-Packard will present an industrial application of this approach in session 9.3.
Happy (unit) testing,
Axel Scherer
Incisive Product Expert Team
Twitter, @axelscherer