The pitfalls of mixing formal and simulation: Where trouble starts

By Mark Eslinger, Joe Hupcey and Nicolae Tusinschi (Siemens EDA)
EDN (May 23, 2022)

The most effective functional verification environments employ multiple analysis technologies, where the strengths of each are combined to reinforce each other to help ensure that the device under test (DUT) behaves as specified. However, this creates an inherent challenge of properly comparing—and combining—the results from each source to give a succinct, accurate picture of the verification effort’s true status.

The most common problem we see is when design engineers want to merge the results from formal analysis with the results of RTL code and functional coverage from their UVM testbench, yet they don’t fully understand what formal coverage is providing. Hence, we will start on the familiar ground of simulation-generated code and functional coverage before going into defining formal coverage.

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