ASIC/FPGA Verification — Methodology & Practice

SSN provides high-level verification of hardware development maturity, architecture, and process — delivering bug-free designs at IP, subsystem, and full SOC level.

The Verification Challenge

Modern SOC designs routinely contain 500 million to several billion transistors, implementing dozens of IP blocks that communicate over layered protocol hierarchies. A single functional bug at the interface between a PCIe root complex and an AXI interconnect can manifest as a system crash in a deployed product — at a cost of $50,000 to $500,000 per silicon re-spin. Rigorous pre-silicon verification is not optional; it is the primary gating activity of any semiconductor project.

SSN’s verification practice is built on three foundational pillars: Coverage-Driven Verification (CDV), Constrained Random Simulation (CRS), and Assertion-Based Verification (ABV). Together, these approaches systematically explore the functional space of a design until confidence in correctness reaches the threshold required for tape-out signoff.

Coverage-Driven Verification (CDV)

Coverage is the quantitative measure of how thoroughly a design has been exercised. SSN engineers define comprehensive coverage models before writing a single test. These models capture:

Functional coverage points — state machine transitions, protocol phase sequences, FIFO boundary conditions, error injection scenarios.

Code coverage — line, branch, condition, expression, and FSM toggle coverage, ensuring no dead code reaches silicon.

Cross coverage — correlating multiple design signals to verify that critical combinations have been exercised.

Coverage holes drive iterative refinement of constraint randomization and directed test generation until all coverage goals are met. Signoff occurs only when 100% of planned coverage bins are closed.