What is IP verification?

What is Verification IP? Verification IP (VIP) blocks are inserted into the testbench for a design to check the operation of protocols and interfaces, both discretely and in combination. Most standard protocol and interface IP enables verification engineers to check basic features, such as system start-up.

What is subsystem in SoC?

A subsystem typically involves multiple related IP functions, each of which may be very large in its own right. These related IP functions combine to perform a new function, but must do so in a way that is applicable to a wide range of applications.

What is the difference between a SOC and a VIP/IP?

Verifying a VIP/IP is like unit/block level verification of that specific VIP/IP block. An SOC will have several design blocks (IPs) all integrated together and a testbench for an SOC will need to be more complicated and will need several such VIPs to stimulate and verify different interfaces.

Why do we use SV/UVM test cases for SOC verification?

As the complex SoC uses such pre-verified stable IPs, SoC verification engineers generally prefer directed testcases to verify how the entire system works fine with the software [Firmware] running on the processors, than the exhaustive regression simulation with random SV/UVM testcases.

What is SoC verification?

So SoC verification folks write C testcases to generate various directed scenarios through firmware and verify the SoC functionality. During the simulation, the complete C source code is compiled as an object code which will be loaded into on-chip RAM.

What is the difference between SOC and IP in software testing?

At the module/sub-system level, we could randomize the scenarios as much as possible [Regression Testing] and make the IPs stable, finding more bugs and achieving the coverage closure, as the complexity of IP’s functionality is less than SoC.