Functional verification with completely self-checking tests

Writing thorough testbenches to verify complex systems is becoming increasingly difficult and time-consuming. This paper analyzes existing functional verification methodologies, as well as some fundamental problems of functional verification of complex systems. This paper proposes a more powerful and efficient approach for writing fully self-checking tests, using a transaction-based verification method, and concurrent programming techniques. A generic 32×32 cell-based switch fabric system is used as an example to illustrate this methodology