Co-validation environment for memory card compatibility test: a case study

As diverse memory cards based on NAND flash memory are getting popularity with consumer electronics such as digital camera, camcorder and MP3 player, the compatibility problems between a newly developed memory card and existent host systems have become a main obstacle to time-to-market delivery of product. The common practice for memory card compatibility test is to use a real host system as a test bed. As an improved solution, an FPGA-based prototyping board can be used for emulating host systems. However, the above approaches require a long set-up time and have limitations in representing various host and device systems. In this paper, we propose a co-validation environment for compatibility test between memory card and host system using formal modeling based on Esterel language and co-simulation methodology. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed environment with a case study of real memory card development.