Synopsys Claims Industry Support for OpenVera

The manufacturer says . . .

Murray Disman says . . .

Synopsys Announces Growing Industry Support for OpenVera Assertions Design Verification and Service Companies Address Growing Demand for Assertion-Based Methodology by Offering Verification Intellectual Property MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Dec. 9, 2002--Synopsys, Inc., the technology leader for complex integrated-circuit (IC) design, announced the availability of seven new third-party verification intellectual property (IP) offerings based on OpenVera Assertions (OVA). Designed for checking compliance with widely adopted and emerging protocols, OVA verification IP are reusable modules that accelerate the development of a complete verification environment, improving the overall efficiency and productivity for design and verification engineers. With the release of these OVA verification IP offerings, third-party IP providers Cold Spring Engineering, nSys, and Silicon Interfaces join the growing list of design verification and service providers who support OVA for customers seeking an assertion-based methodology to overcome the verification bottleneck. "Our customers are demanding assertion-based verification IP for up-and-coming standards such as PCI Express, and we are responding by developing models based on OVA," said Anil Tickoo, director of sales and marketing at nSys. "With its high level of abstraction, OVA allowed us to quickly create IP that let our customers verify complex functionality using both dynamic and formal verification methods. The end result is that engineers who use our OVA-based IP find corner-case and hard-to-find bugs earlier in the design schedule." OpenVera Assertions Verification IP Available OpenVera Assertions is a high-level verification language that enables an assertion-based methodology for improving verification productivity, and is supported by a library of reusable IP. Design and verification engineers use OVA's powerful declarative constructs to easily create and maintain concise verification code. With a growing list of tool support, OVA IP can easily be used across a variety of verification tools—simulation, test bench, debug, and formal analysis. Furthermore, OVA IP allows verification engineers to focus on verifying the intended behavior of their designs rather than spending an inordinate amount of time setting up verification environments. "Increased interest in OVA and its growing appeal to vendors and users is driving this latest round of verification IP from these providers," said James Watts, OpenVera program manager at Synopsys, Inc. "We continue to welcome design and verification-solution providers to develop OVA verification IP through our successful OpenVera Catalyst Program. When they join the program, providers become part of a broad network of verification companies with expert tool and methodology knowledge in leading verification solutions."

Synopsys is working to strengthen the position of its OpenVera Assertions (OVA) language as Accellera moves towards unifying its various assertion initiatives. The Accellera standards organization plans to have this all done by June, 2003, when it releases SystemVerilog 3.1. SystemVerilog 3.1 is being touted as the first HDVL (hardware design and verification language). The HDVL will combine test-bench creation, assertions, high levels of abstraction, and a direct C interface. The unification efforts will have to rationalize the Superlog assertions already in SystemVerilog 3.0; the formal-property language, PSL, derived from IBM's Sugar contribution; Synopsys' OVA contribution; and OVL, a library of Verilog assertions that were contributed by Verplex Systems. Synopsys describes its OVA as a high-level language that contains declarative constructs for capturing design specification, and is useful in both dynamic and formal verification environments. With these languages, designers describe the target application environment, including complex protocols and data objects, at a high level of abstraction, which, according to the company, significantly improves productivity, readability, and reusability. The third-party IP suppliers that have announced the availability of OVA-based verification IP are Cold Spring Engineering for its Utopia 2.0 and SPI 4.2 cores; nSys for its PCI Express, PCMCIA, UART, and Parallel 1284 cores; and Silicon Interfaces for its Bluetooth and USB 2.0 cores.

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