Multi-user approach claimed to solve growing verification challenge
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Cadence has introduced a verification planning and management solution said to address the challenges posed by ever larger designs.
According to the company, Incisive vManager uses a metric driven verification (MDV) methodology to at least double verification productivity. John Brennan, MDV product management director, said: "This is launching a new era of verification management," he claimed.
Incisive vManager supports multiple users through an SQL database at its heart. "It's a complete rearchitecture," Brennan noted. "The previous solution was single user; this release can support hundreds of users."
Cadence is targeting the package at the largest SoC projects, although it is equally applicable to smaller designs. "Because designs have got larger, more data is produced and we needed to create a solution that could handle orders of magnitude larger designs," he added.
Brennan also pointed to the cost of verification as justification for the development. "Cost is getting enormous," he noted. "At 40nm, the verification cost is $38million; it will be three times as much at 20nm. Customers are concerned about this and vManager addresses the problem, whilst bringing a factor of 10 improvement in bug discovery."
Alongside support for 'unlimited' numbers of users, vManager works with a range of verification and simulation engines and can handle multiple projects. Metrics generated allow users to analyse coverage and test failures and to perform what Brennan called 'failure triage'.
