For a seemingly straightforward technology that’s almost as old as dirt, the concept of code coverage is still kind of confusing. When you ask people what code coverage means, or better, what value it brings to FPGA/ASIC development, you’ll get answers going in a lot of different directions. Comments start at useless and run all the way up to fundamental when it comes to factoring code coverage results into sign-off decisions. And reasoning for why code coverage is both useless and fundamental comes in several shades of grey. It starts feeling like that thing we all assume we understand… but it’s rare to find someone who can explain it in a way we all agree with.

Admittedly, I expect this post to be a tad controversial so today will not be the day for consensus 🙂. Continue reading →