UVM Cookbook released in new edition
An updated and revamped edition of the Verification Academy’s online UVM Cookbook has just been posted. The changes bring the Cookbook in-line with the IEEE 1800.2 UVM standard and promote a new ‘emulation-friendly’ testbench architecture.
Following the update, there is now a single recommended UVM testbench architecture stretching across the Cookbook, allied UVM Framework and Mentor’s Questa Verification IP. In the recommended architecture, TB-DUT connections are handled in a more efficient and reusable way for the increasing number of verification flows incorporating emulation..
All OVM content that was previously a prominent part of the Cookbook has been archived. The main architectural change in the new edition is the recommended use of ‘split transactors’ where, instead of a driver/monitor component having a reference to a pin-level SystemVerilog interface, the transactor will have a reference to a ‘BFM interface’ that supports a set of transaction-level methods called from the transactor. The BFM interface will then drive pin-level signals that are connected to the DUT.
This organization enables higher-bandwidth transaction-level communication across the simulation/emulation boundary, with the BFM interface and all other HDL content executing in the emulator and all class-based UVM components executing in the simulator, as is done in the UVM Framework and by Questa VIP components.
Alongside the architectural update and the emulation-friendly additions, other changes in the new edition Cookbook include:
- An additional ‘UVM Basics’ Introduction
- A streamlined chapter on ‘Testbench Architecture’
- Some material has been moved where more appropriate to ‘UVM Basics’
- A rewritten and streamlined section on ‘DUT-Testbench Connections’
- An additional chapter on ‘UVM Messaging’
- An updated chapter on ‘Register Abstraction Layer’ in line with the 1800.2 standard
- An updated chapter on ‘Testbench Acceleration’
- An updated chapter on ‘UVM Connect’
There has also been a general tidying up of appendices and the removal of OVM references from the ‘live’ Cookbook.
