TOPICS

Course materials
Course materials are renowned for being the most comprehensive and user friendly available. Their style, content and coverage is unique in the HDL training world and has made them sought after resources in their own right. Course fees include:
Fully indexed course notes creating a complete reference manual
Workbook full of practical examples to help you apply your knowledge
Verilog Golden Reference Guide for language, syntax, semantics and tips
Tour guides (to support the tools and technologies of your choice)

Structure and Content
Verification Strategies
Verification flow • Black and white box testing styles • Code analysis to guide testing • Techniques for stimulus generation and output checking

Advanced Verilog for Verification
Fine-grain concurrency with fork/join • The Verilog simulation cycle and its impact on coding style • Non-determinism and race hazards • Understanding the effect of delayed signal assignments

Improving the Quality of your Test Fixture Code
Structuring test fixtures with tasks and functions • Tactics for packaging code for maintainability and re-use • Advanced stimulus generators: serial data, complex timing • Software encapsulation: modules, local variables, multiple hierarchies

Transaction-Based Test Fixtures
Bus functional models • Techniques for layering your test fixtures • Using Verilog modules like OO classes • Transaction generation using bus functional models • Re-use and flexibility of test fixture code

Monitoring
Specify blocks • Built-in timing checks • Strobing inputs and sampling outputs • Measuring delays • Storing inputs/outputs in a buffer • Collecting and filtering diagnostic data • Simple data visualisation techniques

Component Modelling Introduction
Uses of component modelling • Component modelling methods • Choosing a component model • Structure of a component model • Handling asynchronous inputs • Storing inputs/outputs and sampling outputs • Measuring delays

Modelling and Analysis Techniques
Modelling memories • Imitating dynamic allocation in Verilog • Using public domain PLI applications to model large memories • Modelling external analogue subsystems • Signature analysis and other techniques for regression testing • Varying the timing of stimulus • Modelling communcations channels • Random and directed-random tests

Using PLI Libraries (note: no prior experience of C is assumed)
Incorporating PLI applications into your simulations • What the PLI can and can’t do • Two generations of the PLI – which to use? • Types of PLI application: functions, stimulus generators, file access, component models • Pointers to functions in C • Function pointer tables • PLI application integration in various simulators

Verilog-2001, Verilog-2005 and SystemVerilog for Verification
A tutorial review of recent changes in the Verilog language that are relevant to verification • Preview of SystemVerilog verification extensions

Optional modules – (Expert Verification)
To meet varying specialist interests for team-based training, one or more of these optional modules can be integrated with the course by prior agreement with LearnChase. These options are not available on scheduled public courses.

Modelling Analogue Hardware
Verilog drive strengths • Modelling I/O primitives such as open-drain and pullup • Verilog switch primitives • Simulating the external analogue world using real numbers and sampled-time

Verilog File I/O
Review of Verilog-1995 file I/O mechanisms • Verilog-2001 file I/O model and file reading functions • Reading structured data from text files • File-driven test fixtures

Writing PLI Applications
The PLI option requires a working knowledge of the C programming language.
PLI jargon • VPI and TF/ACC routines • Creating a simple PLI application • Linking PLI code to your Verilog simulation • Callback functions • Stimulus generators • Making PLI applications sensitive to input changes • Writing component models in the PLI.