The CoveRT Approach for Coverage Management in Analog and Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits

Abstract

Coverage is a key indicator for verification progress, verification closure, and verification sign-off in an integrated circuit design. The notion of coverage management, namely, the use of coverage information across the design hierarchy to identify verification loopholes, is well understood in the digital context, but requires considerable disambiguation in the analog/mixed-signal (AMS) context. This article develops the core artifacts of AMS coverage and presents a comprehensive coverage management approach based on our tool, CoveRT. Our results, gleaned from live industrial designs, demonstrate the benefits of AMS coverage management across the design hierarchy, both in terms of identifying verification gaps, as well as in finding design bugs.