Teaching Functional Verification: Lab Mechanics

Design Automation Conference

Sunday, June 9, 2002

Agenda Administration Lab 1 Lab 2 Lab 3 Grading

Administration Length of labs

Lab 1 – 1 week Lab 2 – 4 weeks Lab 3 – 4-6 weeks

Instructor/TA Availability Lab 1 – e-mail/office hours Lab 2 – e-mail/office hours/1-2 lab days Lab 3 – e-mail/office hours/3-4 lab days

Administration (continued) Website with lab specifications Student Message Board

Students helping students Monitored/Administrated by Instructor

Student Team Sizes Lab 1 – Individual Lab 2 – Individual Lab 3 – Individual or groups of 2

Individual requires more time

Lab 1 Focused on directed type testing Black box approach

No visibility into RTL Input to output type tests Bus Functional Models (BFM) provided Students need only to use the BFM’s Bugs fixed by setting “error” input signal Students hand in bug analysis

Post Lab 1 exercise Discuss deficiencies of lab 1

Specification Directed nature

Discuss better approach Pseudo-random stimulus Self-checking

Discuss nature of bugs

Lab 2 Build upon lab 1 and lecture material Given starting point reference from

solution (better approach) of lab 1 Introduce High Level Verification

Languages (HVL’s) Grey box approach Provide a testplan from lab 1 Introduce students to debug

Lab 2 (continued) Bug fixes are done by “forcing” internal

nets If using VHDL, use procedures with FLI calls

This reduces instructors maintenance work load on design

If using Verilog/HVL, force nets directly Introduce students to “regression”

Provide ability for students to regress Students hand in testplan and bug

analysis

Post Lab 2 exercise Discuss deficiencies of lab 2

When are we done? Coverage

Maintenance of code in environment Lab 1 solution not well commented

Reuse Discuss nature of bugs Establish Coding guidelines for

regression purposes (pass, fail, etc)

Lab 3 Builds upon lab 2 and lecture material Provide lab 2 solution Coverage oriented

Provide mechanism for code coverage Provide functional coverage goals

Testplan becomes more of a functional coverage plan

Same approach as lab 2 for bug fixes and debug

Students hand in testplan

Grading Lab 1

Bug analysis Lab 2

Testplan and bug analysis Lab 3

Perform “escape analysis” for each group “Panel” session What bugs were found What techniques were used Poke holes in environment Ensure environment followed testplan

Grading (continued) Complete bug discovery isn’t

necessary for “A” Testplan Environment Methodology

Summary Each lab builds upon itself

Emphasizes reuse and maintenance Labs emphasize lecture material

Testplan Pseudo-random Self-checking Regressions Coverage

Summary (continued) Labs are time intensive

Students time Instructors time May opt to have some classes as “lab

sessions” depending on schedule and syllabus