Integrated circuits (IC), often called chips, combine multiple discrete electronic devices onto a single substrate utilizing the capabilities of semiconductor materials. The development of the digital portions of an IC can be divided into several stages, including:
functional design and verification
physical design and verification
packaging
manufacturing test
Chip Design Verification is taking the implementation of a chip at some level of abstraction and confirming that the implementation meets some specification or reference design. Chip design verification aims to identify and correct design defects in the chip before it goes into manufacturing.
IC design verification aims to identify and correct design defects in the chip before it goes into manufacturing. In summary, the IC design verification focuses on answering the following questions:
Does the IC design meet the specifications?
Does the IC design correctly implement the microarchitecture?
These questions can be answered via the following techniques:
Property Checking: Are all the properties of the design outlined in the specification exercised correctly in the design?
Simulation: Given an executable model of the design, send stimulus into the design, and check the correctness of the corresponding simulated output of the executable model (manually or automatically via a reference model or check.
