Challenges in System on Chip Verification

The challenges of system on a chip (SoC) verification is becoming increasingly complex as submicron process technology shrinks die size, enabling system architects to include more functionality in a single chip solution. A functional defect refers to the feature sets, protocols or performance parameters not conforming to the specifications of the SoC. Some of the functional defects can be solved by software workarounds but some require revisions of silicon. The revision of silicon not only costs millions of dollars but also impacts time to market, quality, customer commitments. Working silicon for the first revision of the SoC requires a robust module, chip and system verification strategy to uncover the logical and timing defects before tapeout. Different techniques are needed at each level (module, chip and system) to complete verification. In addition verification should quantify with a metric at every hierarchy to assess functional holes and address it. Verification metric can be a combination of code coverage, functional coverage, assertion coverage, protocol coverage, interface coverage and system coverage. A successful verification strategy also requires the test bench to be scalable, configurable, support reuse of functional tests, integration with tools and finally linkage to validation. The scope of this paper will discuss the verification strategy and pitfalls used in verification strategy and finally make recommendations for successful strategy.