Cadence adds flexibility to their verification environment

Cadence announced a couple of interesting changes in their Open Verification Methodology (OVM) and Verification IP licensing today, both of which should simplify life for verification engineers. In the former, the company has contributed e and SystemC libraries to the OVM open-source libraries, expanding the range of OVM to three major verification languages. Only Vera is left out. In the latter move, the company has made the licensing scheme for their proprietary Incisive Verification IP products more flexible.

The move to add e and SystemC was driven by Cadence’s recognition that on an SoC design, it’s often not possible to confine the verification IP to a single source language. Design blocks come from different sources, different places, and different times. And with no standardization in the industry on a single way of expressing even transaction-level behavior, that means that as often as not, the various pieces of design IP going into a new SoC will come with verification IP in different languages.

So using the transaction-based OVM as a foundation, Cadence has donated libraries of e and SystemC verification IP to the Community Contributions section of the OVM-World Web site, complementing the existing SystemVerilog libraries. The verification IP will continue to be open-source, governed by an Apache 2.0 license.

On the commercial front, Cadence is trying to simplify the licensing process for its own non-open-source Incisive verification IP. Rather than licensing each piece of verification IP from the Incisive library separately, under the new scheme–which takes effect with the March 2 release–users will be able to get a single license to the entire library, allowing them to check out particular modules, use them, and return them as needed. In this way, a design team can change the mix of verification IP modules they are using on the fly, as the needs of the project dictate. This should avoid having to renegotiate the license or add items too it as the project evolves.

No striking technology leaps here, but some useful aids to the beleaguered verification engineer. Always welcome.