Designer-level verification: an industrial experience story

Designer-level verification (DLV) is now widely accepted as a necessary practice in the hardware industry. More than ever, logic designers are held responsible for the initial validation of modules they develop, before these are released to systematic verification. DLV requires specific tools and methods adapted for designers, who are not full-time verification experts. We present user experience stories and usage statistics, describing how DLV has been practiced in our company, using a dedicated tool developed for this purpose. A typical pattern that emerges is of designers devoting short, fragmented time periods to DLV work, interleaved with other logic development tasks. We observe that the deployed DLV tool supports this mode of work, since it is simple and intuitive. This demonstrates that a suitable tool can help DLV become an integral part of a logic design project.