David J. Lacey

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.

Chapter 3 Specifying RTL Properties 61 3. 1 Definitions and concepts 62 62 3. 1. 1 Property 3. 1. 2 Events 65 3. 2 Property classification 65 Safety versus liveness 66 3. 2. 1 3. 2. 2 Constraint versus assertion 67 3. 2. 3 Declarative versus procedural 67 3. 3 RTL assertion specification techniques 68 RTL invariant assertions 69 3. 3. 1 3. 3. 2 Declaring properties with PSL 72 RTL cycle related assertions 73 3. 3. 3 3. 3. 4 PSL and default clock declaration 74 3. 3. 5 Specifying sequences 75 3. 3. 6 Specifying eventualities 80 3. 3. 7 PSL built-in functions 82 3. 4Pragma-based assertions 82 3. 5 SystemVerilog assertions 84 3. 5. 1 Immediate assertions 84 3. 5. 2Concurrent assertions 86 3. 5. 3 System functions 95 3. 6 PCI property specification example 96 3. 6. 1 PCI overview 96 3. 7 Summary 102 Chapter 4 PLI-Based Assertions 103 4. 1 Procedural assertions 104 4. 1. 1 A simple PLI assertion 105 4. 1. 2 Assertions within a simulation time slot 108 4. 1. 3 Assertions across simulation time slots 111 4. 1. 4 False firing across multiple time slots 116 4. 2 PLI-based assertion library 118 4. 2. 1 Assert quiescent state 119 4. 3 Summary 123 Chapter 5 Functional Coverage 125 5. 1 Verification approaches 126 5. 2 Understanding coverage 127 5. 2. 1 Controllability versus observability 128 5. 2.

Chapter 3 Specifying RTL Properties 61 3. 1 Definitions and concepts 62 62 3. 1. 1 Property 3. 1. 2 Events 65 3. 2 Property classification 65 Safety versus liveness 66 3. 2. 1 3. 2. 2 Constraint versus assertion 67 3. 2. 3 Declarative versus procedural 67 3. 3 RTL assertion specification techniques 68 RTL invariant assertions 69 3. 3. 1 3. 3. 2 Declaring properties with PSL 72 RTL cycle related assertions 73 3. 3. 3 3. 3. 4 PSL and default clock declaration 74 3. 3. 5 Specifying sequences 75 3. 3. 6 Specifying eventualities 80 3. 3. 7 PSL built-in functions 82 3. 4Pragma-based assertions 82 3. 5 SystemVerilog assertions 84 3. 5. 1 Immediate assertions 84 3. 5. 2Concurrent assertions 86 3. 5. 3 System functions 95 3. 6 PCI property specification example 96 3. 6. 1 PCI overview 96 3. 7 Summary 102 Chapter 4 PLI-Based Assertions 103 4. 1 Procedural assertions 104 4. 1. 1 A simple PLI assertion 105 4. 1. 2 Assertions within a simulation time slot 108 4. 1. 3 Assertions across simulation time slots 111 4. 1. 4 False firing across multiple time slots 116 4. 2 PLI-based assertion library 118 4. 2. 1 Assert quiescent state 119 4. 3 Summary 123 Chapter 5 Functional Coverage 125 5. 1 Verification approaches 126 5. 2 Understanding coverage 127 5. 2. 1 Controllability versus observability 128 5. 2.