Qualis debuts reusable verification components

The off-the-shelf DVCs represent a new direction for Qualis, which had previously developed several Specman "verification components" for use with Qualis' consulting business. "What we're doing now is transitioning Qualis to a product focus," said Michael Horne, Qualis' presiden t and chief executive. "We're becoming something between an IP [intellectual-property] vendor and an EDA vendor."

Indeed, said Horne, what Qualis brings to verification is akin to what silicon IP brings to system-on-chip design. "Design reuse has caught on well, but verification reuse keeps getting left behind," he said. "Yet verification has become the dominant part of the design effort."

Qualis already has DVCs for Sonet, Utopia 1 and 2, and ATM for Specman. An ambitious road map includes more networking DVCs, processor cores and wireless communications protocols.

Horne called Vera and Specman powerful "general simulation engines," but said customers must do a lot more work to use them for specific problems. "It can take three to six person-months to get an environment together so people can write meaningful tests," he said.

The Ethernet DVC for Vera is a complete test environment for IEEE 802.3-2000, with programmable stimulus generation, automated response checking and tes t coverage measurement. It lets users generate test packets, detect collision conditions, catch protocol violations and check for standards compliance. An annual license is $7,500.

The SPI 4.2 DVC for Specman supports OIF SPI4-02.0, with random and directed stimulus generation checking and functional coverage. Its constrainable interface enables packet generation over multiple channels. The price is $10,000 per year.