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Though similar, the methods differ in capabilities, applications
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With the high-stakes financial and timeto-market risks involved in designing ICs, design verification has become critical. The question is: Which verification methods are necessary for first-pass silicon success?
There are several factors to consider. First you need to look at the type, size, complexity and geometry of your IC. However, the most crucial consideration in determining your verification method is the current stage and quality of your design.
The verification process always begins with block-level simulation. At this stage your design blocks are raw and have an abundance of bugs. Once you've simulated to reduce the bug count, you then integrate the blocks to build the end product.
Simulation acceleration
The verification process now becomes a system-verification problem. If you take into consideration the various bus interfaces, real-time data, embedded software and the external user interfaces, you will need more verification cycles. To accomplish that, you can turn to...