Verification of Mixed-Signal Systems
CONCLUSION
A standard and consolidated methodology and a common environment for the verification of mixed-signal system are not available yet: analogue/digital design and simulation activities are only linked at top-level and for smaller sub-systems. This is due to the fact that analogue simulators are orders of magnitude slower than digital simulators [4]. The end effect is that even trivial design mistakes are enough to cause serious failures of the whole system, because the users can forget to verify a particular case by using traditional test-benches. Moreover, many hypotheses have to be assumed on the analogue/digital interface.
It is proven [6] that by using AHDL models, the simulations are very fast and can be very accurate if the non ideal effects are modelled in a proper way [5]. Based on that, the integrated mixed-signal verification environment proposed in this paper is an answer to the previous mentioned open issues: for instance, it can both randomise the analogue sub-system non ideal effects as in a classical fully analogue transistor level simulation approach, and also produce a coverage analysis based on covered input/output spaces and analogue/digital coverage items as well.
In brief, this approach links analogue and digital worlds in a common environment to help the verification engineer to produce more test cases than in traditional approaches, in a faster way, minimizing overlap simulation and in a virtually independent way from the designer point of view. Moreover, it provides ready to use verification kit and verification components to improve productivity and reliability.
REFERENCES
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[14] G.Bonfini, M.Chiavacci, F.Colucci, F.Gronchi, R.Mariani, E.Pescari, A.Sterpin, "Fault Coverage in A New Mixed-Signal Verification Approach", International Mixed-Signals Testing Workshop 2005 (IMSTW'05), 27-29 June, Cannes, France.
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