I know what an "app" is on my iPhone, and I appreciate how the "apps" model is changing the world of electronics. But when Joe Hupcey III, director of product management at Cadence, organized an upcoming DVCon tutorial on formal analysis apps, I was unsure just what a "formal analysis app" is. The answer is in the video clip embedded in this blog post.
The tutorial is titled "Using Apps to Take Formal Analysis Mainstream," and it will be held Thursday March 1 from 8:30 am to 12:00 pm at the DVCon conference in San Jose, California. It includes speakers from Cadence, NextOp Software, and Oski Technology.
Formal analysis, also known as property checking, has come into fairly widespread use for block-level verification. Even so, it is still often the domain of experts, and it has a lot of potential uses that relatively few design teams have explored. For example, I wrote recently about how formal analysis techniques can evaluate the reachability of coverage holes, making simulation code coverage much more effective.
In the video, Joe explains that a formal analysis "app" provides a solution for a high-value problem, and it can be easily used by engineers without requiring specialized knowledge. "Apps" take the value proposition of formal analysis well beyond traditional property checking. Coverage reachability in simulation is one example, and SoC connectivity checking, described in the video, is another.
There are also third-party formal analysis "apps," and one example is the assertion synthesis offered by NextOp Software. That's why Yunshan Zhu, CEO of NextOp, will be one of the speakers at the tutorial. (For more about NextOp, see my Q&A interview blog or Joe Hupcey's video blog). Another speaker is Vigyan Singhal of Oski Technology, a service provider that offers assertion-based verification. Also speaking is Chris Komar, Cadence R&D architect.
If video fails to open, click here.
You can either attend this tutorial as part of a DVCon full conference pass, or sign up separately for $75. This cost includes breakfast, lunch and speaker slides on a USB drive. For more information and registration, see the DVCon web site.
Richard Goering