Accelerating SystemVerilog UVM Based VIP to Improve Methodology for Verification of Image Signal Processing Designs Using HW Emulator

TL;DR

This paper introduces the development of Acceleratable UVCs from standard UVCs in SystemVerilog, enabling faster verification of image signal processing designs through hardware emulation, improving performance and reducing development risks.

Contribution

It presents a method to convert standard UVCs into Acceleratable UVCs compatible with UVM, leveraging SCE-MI for efficient hardware/software co-emulation in image signal processing verification.

Findings

Significantly reduced verification runtime with hardware acceleration.

Full backward compatibility of Acceleratable UVCs with standard UVM environments.

Successful application in image signal processing design verification.

Abstract

In this paper we present the development of Acceleratable UVCs from standard UVCs in SystemVerilog and their usage in UVM based Verification Environment of Image Signal Processing designs to increase run time performance. This paper covers development of Acceleratable UVCs from standard UVCs for internal control and data buses of ST imaging group by partitioning of transaction-level components and cycle-accurate signal-level components between the software simulator and hardware accelerator respectively. Standard Co-Emulation API: Modeling Interface (SCE-MI) compliant, transaction-level communications link between test benches running on a host system and Emulation machine is established. Accelerated Verification IPs are used at UVM based Verification Environment of Image Signal Processing designs both with simulator and emulator as UVM acceleration is an extension of the standard simulation-only UVM and is fully backward compatible with it. Acceleratable UVCs significantly reduces development schedule risks while leveraging transaction models used during simulation. In this paper, we discuss our experiences on UVM based methodology adoption on TestBench-Xpress(TBX) based technology step by step. We are also doing comparison between the run time performance results from earlier simulator-only environment and the new, hardware-accelerated environment. Although this paper focuses on Acceleratable UVCs development and their usage for image signal processing designs, Same concept can be extended for non-image signal processing designs. KEYWORDS- SystemVerilog, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), TestBench-Xpress (TBX), Universal Verification Component (UVC), Standard Co-Emulation API: Modelling Interface (SCE-MI), Acceleratable UVC, Emulator, XRTL Tasks/Functions (xtf), Transactor interface (tif), Verification IP (VIP).