As SoC designs are evolving and growing in complexity to match the capabilities of today’s ASIC and FPGA technologies, so too are the testbenches and verification flows built around those designs. They are complex Software Engineering projects in their own right.
There are new criteria driving evolution in complexity - such as concurrent DUT stimulus, multi-level reuse of components and sequences, portability from simulator to emulator enabled by today’s emulator architecture, and increasingly common is that design/verification teams are split across locations and geographies, collaborating on mega-gate designs.
That kind of development requires speed – speed of execution, speed of turnaround, and ultimately speed of the tools in the flow. What is needed is a simulation build/regression flow where the tools are optimized for maximum speed, and maximum turnaround time.
