Thought Leadership

Off to DAC!

By Dennis Brophy

Where might our paths cross?

It is always challenge to fit all the needed visits in during the Design Automation Conference (DAC).  If you happen to like some of the same events I attend, then the chances are good our paths might cross in public.

Saturday and Sunday are busy with an Accellera Systems Initiative board meeting.  Split across two days, Accellera board members will meet to conduct traditional business and  do some strategic planning in which each board member outlines what they aspire the goals and objectives for the group should be in the coming year.  Intel has graciously granted space in their San Francisco offices, so I won’t be around the Moscone Center during the pre-conference setup phase.  (By the way, Thank you Intel!)
After we close the Accellera board meeting on Sunday, I plan to attend the pre-DAC events on Sunday that include the EDAC reception (registration required) at 6:00pm  (San Francisco Marriott, Salon 7) and Gary Smith’s “Sunday Night at DAC” at 7:00pm (San Francisco Marriott, Salon 6).

During the conference I will spend most of my time at the Mentor Graphics Verification Academy Booth  #1514 and on Wednesday split my time between there and the Accellera Systems Imitative meetings.  And just in case you may note that most of my evenings are not scheduled, they are with customer activities.

MentorGraphics-LogoWhen the show floor is open, you will find me most of the time at the Verification Academy Booth #1514.  I will join Mentor’s Harry Foster there were user and partner presentations will be done on UVM applications, updates on Harry’s research results, updates on important verification standards from Mentor’s perspective and more.  You are invited to join other verification experts for the Tuesday evening cocktail reception at the Verification Academy Booth.  (And the cocktail hour may be just the thing that tis needed before the annual DAC Birds-Of-A-Feather meetings begin to help the conversations start.)

Verification Academy DAC Schedule

Monday, June 4th Tuesday, June 5th Wednesday, June 6th
10:00 – Simulation and Formal Assertion-Based Verification
Harry Foster, Mentor Graphics
9:30 – Using the UVM Register Layer
John Aynsley, Doulos
10:00 – Bringing UVM to Life
Ellie Burns, Mentor Graphics
11:00 – Bringing UVM to Life
Ellie Burns, Mentor Graphics
10:00 – Generating Coverage Models and Achieving Coverage Closure
Mark Olen, Mentor Graphics
11:00 – Resistance is Futile: Learning to love UVM!
Mike Bartley, Test & Verification Solutions
2:00 – Verification of Low Power SoCs with IEEE UPF
Stephen Bailey, Mentor Graphics
2:00 – Bringing UVM to Life
Ellie Burns, Mentor Graphics
2:00 – Automating Assertion Based Verification with NextOp and Mentor Graphics
Yunshan Zhu, NextOp
3:00 – Evolving Trends in Functional Verification
Harry Foster, Mentor Graphics
3:00 – Evolving Trends in Functional Verification
Harry Foster, Mentor Graphics
3:00 – UVM Express
Mike Baird, Willamette HDL, Inc.
4:00 – An Introduction to AMBA 4 AXI Coherency Extensions (ACE) and Verification Challenges
Paul Martin, ARM
4:00 – Evolving Trends in Functional Verification
Harry Foster, Mentor Graphics
5:00 – Using Rules-Based Integration to Develop a SoC-Level UVM Verification Environment
David Murray, Duolog
5:00 – Meet the Verification Experts Cocktail Reception

Accellera logo_color_200x111 - CopyAccellera Systems Initiative will host a set of meetings on Wednesday starting with a luncheon to roll out the Unified Coverage Operability Standard (UCIS).  The lunch is free and seating is limited and registration is required.

Hosted Luncheon and Technical Presentation

Accellera Systems Initiative Rolls Out the Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard


Speaker: Dr. Richard Ho, Co-Chair of the UCIS Technical Subcommittee

Wednesday, June 6, 12:00-1:30pm
Moscone Center, Room 250
Register Now >
This luncheon is open to all DAC attendees. Seating is limited! You must pre-register for this event.

Coverage metrics are critical to measuring and guiding design verification. As designs have grown, increasingly advanced verification technologies, methods and additional metrics have been designed to form a fuller coverage model. There is currently no single metric that consistently and globally tells engineers the exact status of verification. But one step in the right direction is to bring all types of coverage metrics into a single database that can be accessed in an industry standard way. The UCIS facilitates the creation of a unified coverage database that allows for interoperability of coverage data across multiple tools from multiple vendors.

This presentation, intended for verification managers and tool developers alike, provides an introduction to and overview of the UCIS and how users plan to utilize it to enhance their verification flows. We provide a survey of many of the commonly-used coverage metrics and how they are modeled in the UCIS. The information that users will be able to access through the UCIS will allow them to write their own applications to analyze, grade, merge and report coverage from one or more databases from one or more tool vendors. We will also discuss the XML-based interchange format of UCIS, which provides a path to exchange coverage databases without requiring a common code library between tools and vendors.

SystemC User Group Meeting

NASCUG XVIII

North American SystemC User’s Group Meeting
Wednesday, June 6, 2:00-6:00pm
Moscone Center, Room 262
Register Now >
This event is open to all DAC attendees. Seating is limited!

The North American SystemC Users Group (NASCUG) provides a unique forum for sharing SystemC experiences and knowledge among industry, research and universities. The agendafor the event has a lot offer user group attendees.

Mentor’s Adam Erickson will present An Open-Source, Standards-Based Library for Achieving Interoperability Between TLM Models in SystemC and SystemVerilog.  Adam’s presentation is scheduled to start at 3:00pm.

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/verificationhorizons/2012/05/30/off-to-dac/