SystemVerilog Assertions and Functional Coverage: Guide to Language, Methodology and Applications

This book provides a hands-on, application-oriented guide to the language and methodology of both SystemVerilog Assertions and SystemVerilog Functional Coverage. Readers will benefit from the step-by-step approach to functional hardware verification using SystemVerilog Assertions and Functional Coverage, which will enable them to uncover hidden and hard to find bugs, point directly to the source of the bug, provide for a clean and easy way to model complex timing checks and objectively answer the question ‘have we functionally verified everything’. Written by a professional end-user of ASIC/SoC/CPU and FPGA design and Verification, this book explains each concept with easy to understand examples, simulation logs and applications derived from real projects. Readers will be empowered to tackle the modeling of complex checkers for functional verification, thereby drastically reducing their time to design and debug. 

This updated second edition addresses the latest functional set released in IEEE-1800 (2012) LRM, including numerous additional operators and features. Additionally, many of the Concurrent Assertions/Operators explanations are enhanced, with the addition of more examples and figures.

·         Covers in its entirety the latest IEEE-1800 2012 LRM syntax and semantics;

·         Covers both SystemVerilog Assertions and SystemVerilog Functional Coverage language and methodologies;

·         Provides practical examples of the what, how and why of Assertion Based Verification and Functional Coverage methodologies;

·         Explains each concept in a step-by-step fashion and applies it to a practical real life example;

·         Includes 6 practical LABs that enable readers to put in practice the concepts explained in the book.

Ashok Mehta has been working in the ASIC/SoC design and verification field for over 20 years. He started his career at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) working first as a CPU design engineer, moving on to hardware design verification of the VAX11-785 CPU design. He then worked at Data General, Intel (first Pentium design team) and after a route of a couple of startups, worked at Applied Micro and TSMC. He was a very early adopter of Verilog and participated in Verilog, VHDL, iHDL (Intel HDL) and SDF (standard delay format) technical subcommittees. He has also been a proponent of ESL (Electronic System Level) designs and at TSMC he released two industry standard Reference Flows that take designs from ESL to RTL while preserving the verification environment for reuse from ESL to RTL. Lately, he has been involved with 3DIC design verification challenges at TSMC which is where SystemVerilog Assertions played an instrumental role in stacked die SoC design verification.

Ashok earned an MSEE from University of Missouri. He holds 13 U.S. Patents in the field of SoC and 3DIC design verification.