- #VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION FULL#
- #VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION VERIFICATION#
- #VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION SOFTWARE#
- #VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION PLUS#
- #VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION SIMULATOR#
#VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION FULL#
As an envelope simulation model, riscvOVPsim supports all of the configuration options of the ratified ISA specification, in addition to the draft specifications for bit manipulation and vectors.īased on the original contributions, in 2019 Imperas donated the full suite of tests for the RV32I compliance tests.
#VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION SIMULATOR#
The latest tests are available here and include the free-to-use riscvOVPsim refence simulator that is used by the CWG in the development of the test suites. The RISC-V International technical committee working group for Compliance (Compliance Working Group – CWG) includes a number of leading RISC-V members that help and contribute towards the test framework and also the test suites themselves. Compliance tests are just one aspect of the complete DV plan.
#VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION VERIFICATION#
A processor by definition is a complex state machine with dynamic interrupts and multiple modes of operation and privilege levels that present many scenarios that are not included as part of the scope of the compliance tests, and so should not be considered as equivalent to a verification test suite. The compliance requirement is that the basic structure and some basic behaviors are within the envelope of the permitted specification features it does not exhaustively test all functional aspects of a processor – it confirms that the RTL implementor has read and understood the ISA specifications.
#VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION SOFTWARE#
While this is a key requirement for the benefit of the software community and the tools/OS ecosystem, compliance is not the same as verification. Some more information on the methodology around the use for SystemVerilog for SoC verification testbenches can be found in reference books such as “SystemVerilog for Verification: A Guide to Learning the Testbench Language Features” by Chris Spear and Greg Tumbush (ISBN-13: 978-1489995001) available via Amazon.Īs RISC-V is an open ISA, the compliance tests are essential to confirm the basic operation is in accordance with the specification. The paper and presentation are available here. A recent example is the paper presented at DVCon in San Jose, in March 2020 called “Rolling the Dice with Random Instructions is the Safe Bet on RISC-V Verification” which was co-authored by Imperas, the team at Google working on the Google ISG project, and Metrics Technologies. Some excellent books have been published in recent years that cover these basic principles and the latest approaches are well-documented in some of the leading conference proceedings. A reference model to compare the results against.The RTL to test (DUT – Device Under Test).However, if a project has already started or is reviewing the options with some of the many open source cores that are available, these techniques, outlined below, can form the basis of a test and verification plan, or at a minimum, act as an incoming inspection test for any imported IP cores.Ī RISC-V processor verification project requires four key items: This is especially true of any use of custom instructions or extensions. As RISC-V offers a broad array of options and extensions as each item is reviewed and considered for the project, its verification implications should be included in the analysis. Ideally, the verification process should start at the beginning of the design project for a processor implementation. However, as RISC-V is an open ISA, with many different register-transfer level (RTL) implementations, some level of processor verification is now required by all adopters. While processor verification is not a new topic the market growth around a few proprietary architectures has resulted in today’s SoC design flow becoming based on the assumption of known good processor IP. This article addresses the latest developments around the use of the RISC-V processor compliance suite, verification testing and is a useful guide for using a reference model-based processor DV flow. While fundamentally a processor is a hardware design with the main objective of correctly executing software, it makes sense that software will play an important role in the overall verification process.
#VERIFY ARM EMULATOR OPERATION PLUS#
Given that RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture (ISA), a RISC-V processor designer has many implementation and configuration options, plus the freedom of extending the ISA with custom instructions and extensions. By Kevin McDermott, Vice President of Marketing at Imperas Software Ltd.ĭesign Verification (DV) test planning using a trusted SoC methodology for RISC-V processor verification including custom extensions Introduction