Don't Let the Bugs Bite: Reducing Design Reworks and Errors with Advanced Linting (Part 1)

By Synopsys, Inc.

October 28, 2022

With devices getting smarter and the combined power of silicon and software fueling an array of connected applications, it’s no secret that chip design teams are always thinking of different ways to deliver innovative and differentiated products to customers. While the process of designing a chip is of paramount importance in the semiconductor world, many disregard how critical the quality of the design and testbench code is to a project’s success.

Amid a multitude of coding styles, challenges from downstream tools, and the race against time-to-market deadlines, engineers face a variety of chip design bugs that result in functional flaws, design iterations, or worse, silicon respins. Though there are tools in the market that can identify RTL inefficiencies during design development, this often takes place later in the chip design cycle, well after a considerable time and energy investment has been made.

In-depth, early analysis at the RTL design phase is key for teams to identify and fix complex silicon RTL issues and adopt a true shift left approach as early as possible. Linting offers a comprehensive checking process for teams to spot fundamental linting issues early on as well as build functional safety, reliability, and portability into systems-on-chip (SoCs) from the get-go.

In the first part of this three-part blog series, we’ll cover the evolution of linting, the benefits of having a guiding methodology and rule set, how to deal with white noise, and, ultimately, how teams can catch design bugs seamlessly no matter the design complexity.

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