Assertion-Based Design

by Harry D. Foster, Adam C. Krolnik, David J. Lacey

Overview

There is much excitement in the design and verification community about assertion-based design. The question is, who should study assertion-based design? The emphatic answer is, both design and verification engineers. What may be unintuitive to many design engineers is that adding assertions to RTL code will actually reduce design time, while better documenting design intent. Every design engineer should read this book! Design engineers that add assertions to their design will not only reduce the time needed to complete a design, they will also reduce the number of interruptions from verification engineers to answer questions about design intent and to address verification suite mistakes. With design assertions in place, the majority of the interruptions from verification engineers will be related to actual design problems and the error feedback provided will be more useful to help identify design flaws. A design engineer who does not add assertions to the RTL code will spend more time with verification engineers explaining the design functionality and intended interface requirements, knowledge that is needed by the verification engineer to complete the job of testing the design.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441954626
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	11/05/2010
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of hardcover 2nd ed. 2004
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction.- Assertion Methodology.- Specifying the RTL Properties.- PLI-Based Assertions.- Functional Coverage.- Assertion Patterns.- Assertion Cookbook.- Specifying Correct Behavior.- Appendix A: Open Verification Library.- Appendix B: PSL Property Specification Language.- Appendix C: System Verilog Assertions.

Editorial Reviews

"David Lacey, Harry and Adam are key participants on the Acceller SystemVerilog Standards Group. Their practical verification experience has contributed to the value of the assertion enhancements added to the SystemVerilog standard. These three verification specialists have written a book that will endow the reader with an understanding of the fundamental and important topics needed to comprehend and implement assertion based design. This book is a must for all design and verification engineers."

(Cliff Cummings, Verilog Guru & President, Sunburst Design, Inc.)

From the Publisher