Industry Expert Blogs
Mixed Signal Design IP Embraces Metric-Driven Verification Using RNMMixed-Signal Design - Sathishkumar BalasubramanianAug. 27, 2012 |
Even though it's been over 2 months since this year's Design Automation Conference in San Francisco, I am still surprised by the response that metric-driven, mixed-signal verification gets from our design community. Cadence had quite a few customer presentations at the EDA360 Theater at DAC this year. However, there was one presentation titled "Metric Driven Verification Approach for Analog/Mixed Signal IPs" authored by Pierluigi Daglio and Marco Carlini from STMicroelectronics that has garnered a lot of interest from the verification community.
Metric-driven verification is the norm for digital designs. But, we can extend this concept to analog/mixed signal designs. Analog/mixed signal verification in the context of full chip verification can achieve a respectable coverage level without compromising on performance levels of digital verification. This can be accomplished by using more robust and abstract analog behavior models such as Real Number (RNM) models using Verilog-AMS wreal as an example. RNM models are also provided in VHDL and System Verilog extensions as well.