Improve functional verification quality with mutation-based code coverage

By George Bakewell, SpringSoft Inc.
edadesignline.com (December 07, 2009)

Despite advances in stimulus generation and coverage measurement techniques, existing tools do not tell the engineer "how good" the testbench is at propagating the effects of bugs to observable points or detecting incorrect operation that indicates the presence of bugs.

As a result, decisions about where to focus verification effort, how to methodically improve the environment, whether it is robust enough to catch most potential bugs, and ultimately when verification is "done" are often based on partial data or "gut feel" assessments.

This article discusses the application of mutation-based testing techniques to measure and drive improvement in all aspects of functional verification quality for simulation-based environments as a solution to these problems.

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