Article: Will Open-Source Processors Cause A Verification Shift?

December 19th, 2019: By – Ann Steffora Mutschler

 

 

Tools and methodologies exist, but who will actually do the verification is unclear.

 

 

While the promised flexibility of open source could have advantages and possibilities for processors and SoCs, where does the industry stand on verification approaches and methodologies from here? Single-source ISAs of the past relied on general industry verification technologies and methodologies, but open-source ISA-based processor users and adopters will need to review the verification flows of the processor and SoC.

 

Simon Davidmann, CEO, Imperas Software pointed out during a panel last week at the RISC-V Summit held in Silicon Valley that designs based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture bring interesting verification challenges.