AgileSoC.com Best of 2013

Posted on by nosnhojn

We can’t leave 2013 without a ‘best of’ summary. Here’s the most read 2013 AgileSoC.com posts for 2013…

Why Agile Will Never Work in Hardware: Of course. This makes complete sense. A post with all the reasons why agile can’t work in hardware was the most popular new entry of 2013.

Time to Blow-up UVM: In this post, I propose an alternative direction to that of UVM; a verification framework with a radical opt-in approach. We’re talking a real platform with (truly) independent pieces as opposed to the hyper-integrated UVM.

Planning to Fail in Hardware Development: This was the first of several posts with analysis of hardware development planning practices based on the 2012 survey I did with Catherine Louis. Lots of interest data here for those who missed it. Worth a look.

You’re Either With Me Or You’re With: The UVM Sequencer: OK… so I tend to pick on UVM a bit. Here’s a post where I talk about some of the unnecessary complexity of UVM sequencer.

How Do Verification Engineers Waste 2 Hours, 52 Minutes, 48 Seconds a Day?: Rounding out the top 5 is analysis of the Mentor Graphics verification survey. (Hint: it has to do with debugging garbage code).

Honorable mention goes to the most read AgileSoC.com reigning champion of all time (by a mile): Emacs, org-mode, Kanban, Pomodoro… Oh my…. That’s Bryan. He’s an Emacs guys. Please… someone needs to post an entry on kanban with VIM already ;).

Thanks for a successful 2013! Hope we’ll see you back in 2014 for more AgileSoC.com!

-neil

Finally… A Reason For Me to Try Specman

Posted on by nosnhojn

Yes… I know it’s a good tool. People I respect use it and love it. It’s not that I have any specific complaints about Specman, it’s just that I grew up with Vera and SystemVerilog and with the universal support and attention SystemVerilog gets, I’ve never had the urge to try Specman…

…though it seems tool developers at Cadence are trying to change my mind. Continue reading →

Unit Testing on Youtube, Cadence.com and DVCon

Posted on by nosnhojn

Started my day with some encouraging observations that I wanted to share…

First, Victor Lyuboslavsky has posted a couple of youtube videos where he covers some of the basics of unit testing and SVUnit. These are good beginner videos that show how easy it is to get started with SVUnit by kicking the tires on www.edaplayground.com. You can find the videos on youtube. When you’re done with the videos, you can carry on with this online SVUnit tutorial.

Next, an interesting bit of news for fans of unit testing that use Specman, in Victor’s introductory video he mentions Cadence has added unit test capabilities to Specman appropriately named eUnit. You can see more in their Testing the Testbench webinar that was posted last week. I haven’t seen the video yet (having problems logging into the site) so I’ve seen none of the details. Regardless, it’s encouraging to see one of the big 3 pushing unit testing with a new test framework. (I’ll post a follow-up once I’ve seen the webinar).

Lastly… and yes, it may be a little early for this but I’ll throw it out there anyway… on the DVCon2014 program site I see a paper entitled Applying Test-Driven Development Methods To Design Verification Software In UVM-e from Doug Gibson and Michael Kontz of HP. If you’re planning to take in DVCon, be sure to add that talk to your list.

Happy Monday ;).

-neil

Demo SVUnit on EDAPlayground.com

Posted on by nosnhojn

Time to introduce a great new development from an SVUnit early adopter: Victor Lyuboslavsky. Victor is a verification engineer at AMD in Austin that started with SVUnit back in February of 2012. He’s been using SVUnit on and off for almost 2 years now. His most recent work: he’s made it possible for people to build and run SVUnit testcases with no tools or library installation whatsoever. More about that in a second. First, an introduction to his browser-based development tool called EDA Playground.

For the past several months, Victor has been busy developing a browser based development environment called EDA Playground. EDA Playground is interesting because it lets people create a design and testbench, then run simulations with only a web browser. Taken directly from the EDA Playground Overview…

Screen Shot 2013-12-11 at 4.25.25 PM

In addition to being able to run simulations in a web browser, EDA Playground offers support for various verification libraries. People can demo small designs built on libraries like UVM, OVM and SVUnit.

Wait… SVUnit? Really?

Yes. Really. To experience SVUnit, all you have to do is go to EDA Playground, load one of the many SVUnit examples, tinker around with the code and hit run! That’s it. No installation, scripting or anything to get started. Just a browser.

Even better is that Victor has loaded an SVUnit tutorial I put together for a verification IP called svunitOnSwitch. Here’s what that looks like…

Screen Shot 2013-12-11 at 3.36.05 PM

If you’ve been meaning to try SVUnit but you haven’t been able to find the time, svunitOnSwitch is for you. It’s the perfect little coding exercise you can develop entirely within EDAPlayground. And of course, you can immediately simulate the results to get a feel for the added rigor and productivity you’ll get with SVUnit. The instructions are there; the code is there; all you need is a browser. Just follow the link to svunitOnSwitch.

Thanks to Victor for the continued support for SVUnit and putting together a useful tool like EDA Playground.

-neil

Agile Hardware is Real… and it’s Partly Your Fault

Posted on by nosnhojn

2013-11-12 10.52.20It’s tuesday… maybe a little early yet… but I hope you’re checking your mailbox. If you’ve been an active member or enabler in the agile hardware community, you should soon have your commemorative 1710 day anniversary AgileSoC sticker.

Step 2… if you’ve got it in you to send me a selfy of you and your sticker, I’d love to be able to post a few of those as inspiration for others to join our little community. You can either email it to me at neil.johnson@agilesoc.com or tweet it to @nosnhojn.

Thanks again, all!

-neil

Update: Here’s a few shots of people taking credit for agile hardware. Love it! Keep’em coming!

1710 Days of Agile Hardware

Posted on by nosnhojn

agilesoc-stickerIf you’ve been watching the clock since Bryan first brought up the idea of agile hardware with me back during SNUG 2009, you’ll know that we’ve been working on AgileSoC.com for exactly 1710 days. That’s March 15th, 2009 to today.

To commemorate the 1710 day anniversary of AgileSoC.com, I figured something special was in order. Specifically, something special to recognize the people that have helped fuel this little experiment; those who have helped turn very little into a little more. Continue reading →

Lessons Learned From the MiniTB AMBA IP Library

Posted on by nosnhojn

I’ve come to a checkpoint in the construction of the AMBA IP library that’s packaged with MiniTB. After some part-time development over the last couple months, I have read/write support for ABP and basic read/write support for AHB (you can see the full list of supported features here). These are open-source masters and slaves that I developed using MiniTB.

Next step is AXI, which I’ll start later today. But before I go there, I wanted to share some lessons learned… Continue reading →

MiniTB AMBA IP Version 1

Posted on by nosnhojn

Today, I released a first version APB master BFM with MiniTB. This is the first in a few steps I’m hoping we take in the development of MiniTB. I’d like to provide a user-friendly platform for developers building SoCs with AMBA interconnect. APB was the simplest place to get started. Depending on interest, we’d move on to AHB and/or AXI IP as well. Continue reading →

MiniTB: A Simple Alternative to UVM

Posted on by nosnhojn

MiniTB is a simple yet powerful responsible development platform (RDP) that provides design and verification engineers with an alternative to complex verification methodologies like UVM.

That’s what should have been part of the initial announcement I made releasing MiniTB a few months ago. Originally, I envisioned it a smoke testing platform for RTL design engineers. Leaving it at that, though, I think underestimates the power of the simple platform Jean-Marc and I put together and the success people can create with it. MiniTB is not just a framework for smoke testing RTL, it’s a responsible development platform that addresses many of the concerns people have with current methodologies and techniques.

Complexity is always the first complaint people have when it comes to UVM. Second is how the addition of OO programming constructs to SystemVerilog has become the wedge that’s been driving design and verification engineers apart for the last decade. MiniTB intentionally stresses a level of simplicity and inclusiveness that have been optimized out of methodologies like UVM – slowly and deliberately.

Screen Shot 2013-09-26 at 11.33.05 AM

MiniTB is powerful in that it gives you the flexibility to control your own destiny without locking you in. While it neither provides nor enforces complex methodologies around stimulus generation, configuration or communication, it also does not preclude you from leveraging existing methodologies or creating your own as you see fit. In short, MiniTB does not attempt to impose solutions upon functional verification engineers, it simply provides the framework and run-flow in which people are free – design and verification engineers alike – to create solutions that make sense to them.

If you’re a design or verification engineer that is tired of the complexity, try MiniTB.

-neil