Overview
In this intensive, three-day course, you will learn the key features and benefits of the OpenVera hardware verification language and its use in Vera or VCS NTB.

This course is a hands-on workshop that re-enforces the verification concepts taught in lecture through a series of intense labs. At the end of this class, students should have the skills required to write an object-oriented OpenVera testbench to verify a device under test with coverage-driven random stimulus using Vera or VCS NTB.

Students will first learn how to develop an interface between OpenVera testbenches and their Device Under Test (DUT). Next the workshop will explain how the intuitive object-oriented technology in OpenVera can simplify verification problems. This course concludes with an in-depth discussion of functional coverage including a uniform, measurable definition of functionality and the Vera constructs that allow you to assess the percentage of functionality covered either dynamically or through the use of generated reports.

To reinforce the lecture and accelerate mastery of the material, each student will complete a challenging test suite for real-world, system-based design.

• Build an OpenVera verification environment
• Develop stimulus generators to create constrained random test data
• Develop device driver routines to drive DUT input with stimulus
• Develop device monitor routines to sample DUT output
• Develop self-check routines to verify operation of DUT
• Abstract DUT hardware signals as software variables
• Abstract DUT data as objects
• Execute device driver, monitor and self-checking routines concurrently
• Communicate among concurrent routines using sync/trigger, semaphore and Smart Queues
• Develop functional coverage to measure completeness of test

Audience Profile
Design or Verification engineers who write testbenches at the block or chip level

Prerequisites

To benefit the most from the material presented in this workshop, students should have:

• An understanding of basic concepts of design verification
• Experience with a high-level programming language (such as C) and with an HDL (such as Verilog)
• Familiarity with UNIX workstations running X-windows
• Familiarity with vi, emacs or other UNIX text editor

• Introduction
• The Device Under Test
• OpenVera Verification Environment
• OpenVera Language Basics
• Driving and Sampling DUT Signals
• Virtual Ports

• Concurrency
• Object Oriented Programming: Encapsulation
• Object Oriented Programming: Randomization

• Inter-Thread Communication
• Object Oriented Programming: Inheritance
• Functional Coverage

• VCS 7.2
• Vera 6.3.30