Application of high-level decision diagrams for simulation-based verification tasks

Abstract

This paper describes the advantages of the application of a system representation model, called High-Level Decision Diagrams (HLDDs), for hardware functional verification. Two tasks of simulation-based verification, considered in this paper, are assertion checking and code coverage analysis. Assertion checking employs temporal extension of an existing HLDD model aimed at supporting temporal properties, expressed in Property Specification Language (PSL). The described approach to code coverage analysis provides for more accurate results than traditional VHDL code coverage methods. Experimental results show the feasibility and efficiency of the HLDDs- based approaches.