Meeting Minutes: Analog System Verilog Assertions: Oct 7th, 2008

From: Anand Himyanshu-R61978 <HIMYANSHU.ANAND_at_.....>
Date: Tue Oct 07 2008 - 15:29:43 PDT
Agenda for next Meeting: Since I failed to ask everyone in the meeting
about next meeting's agenda, please email me what you would like to
discuss in the next meeting.
 
Attendees: Listed at the end of the summary:
 
Summary: 
--------------
 
Dejan Nickovic presented examples from DDR2 case study, followed by Mike
Demler's (Synopsys) and Ed Cerny's (Synopsys) presentations. 
 
Srini (Synopsys) raised the question of using SV Tasks to check some of
the examples presented by Dejan. Dejan answered that assertions were
less ad hoc and that procedural AMS was not accurate enough to capture
all the properties. Srini wanted to know about the compactness of the
property. Dejan mentioned that assertions were more concise than writing
in 'C', also assertions are more expressive, they might not be that much
more concise than writing them in VAMS equivalent constructs.
 
On one of the examples (Figure 7, Dejan's presentation), with slew rate
detection, John mentioned that local variables could be used to verify
the variable timing check on the property. Dejan agreed and mentioned
that it could be done. It was mentioned that as long as local variable
had a value that could be referenced and was evaluated before used, it
could be used in an assertion like that.
 
Mike Demler presented the problems that cannot be checked with pure
waveform viewing/checking capabilities and presented examples on the
problem a circuit might have when low voltage inverted is incorrectly
connected to higher voltages. Static checking capability is required in
order to detect power budgets, or violations of transistor level
properties. Ken Bakalar mentioned such checks could be done at the time
of elaboration or if done dynamically at time zero. Kevin Jones added
that if the circuit is digitally controlled then it might be interesting
to see whether the condition is a problem only under certain
circumstances and that it might be dependent on some other property.
Dejan had a point that it could be viewed as a general modal logic
problem rather than a temporal logic problem. The discussion focused on
how to detect a path to power or ground in order to prove correctness of
the circuit. Or how would one check dc paths which might created
(active/static checks). Ken wanted to separate the two issues -
Algorithms (used to do the checks) from Syntax (and how you specify the
checks) from each other. The checks could be done on the transient
simulations or some other tool - maybe some other kind of simulator
which does a different type of analysis.
 
Ed Cerny presented couple of examples and their renderings on the
extended System Verilog Assertions. Ken wanted to know whether Ed had
tried to write those examples in Verilog AMS. Ed's examples had
functions borrowed from the VAMS language like cross and also introduced
some new constructs like "restrict" and "simulation time" semantics to
the assertions. Sri Chandra mentioned that with the work on the
integration of P1800 analog functions should be available within the
language to System Verilog Assertions. Dejan mentioned that assertion
language should be independent of the implementation like PSL has
different syntax flavors for different languages. Himyanshu wanted to
know why the restrict operator was used and why time based operator was
not used. Ed said that it was due to efficiency (did not want to check
at every time step but only at events) and also because events are
already available in SVA and ties nicely with other System level
constructs. Himyanshu mentioned that "end of time" concept could be used
to specify the property passed or failed within a certain duration. John
Havlicek wanted to allow for greater flexibility and let the tool worry
about the internal implementation and efficiency issues. Ed agreed that
time based semantics could be added in addition to event based
semantics.
 
 
Documents: All documents related to Analog assertion released to the
committee can be accessed at
http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertions
/
<http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertion
s/> 

1) Dejan Nickovic's presentation  is available at -
http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertions
/assertions_examples_dejan.zip
<http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertion
s/assertions_examples_dejan.zip>  

2) Mike Demler's presentation  is available at
http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertions
/analog_properties_for_100708.ppt
<http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertion
s/analog_properties_for_100708.ppt> 

3) Eduard Cerny's presentation is available at
http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertions
/SVA_analog_simtime.SNPS081005ec.ppt
<http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertion
s/SVA_analog_simtime.SNPS081005ec.ppt> 

4) We (Scott Little and Himyanshu Anand) have added some more examples
to the ones which were presented last week and the document can be
accessed at
http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertions
/AMSproperties.pdf
<http://www.eda-stds.org/verilog-ams/htmlpages/public-docs/AMS_Assertion
s/AMSproperties.pdf> 

 
Name	 Company	 18-Jun-08	 18-Aug-08	 23-Sep-08
7-Oct-08	
						
Erik Seligman	 Intel	 1	 1	 1	 1	
Thanapoom Lertpanyavit 	 Intel	 1	 1	 1	 1	
David Smith	 Synopsys	 				
Mike Demler	 Synopsys	 1	 1	 1	 1	
Ed Cerny	 Synopsys	 1	 1	 1	 1	
Venkataramanan Srinivasan	 Synopsys	 		1
1	
Dave Cronauer	 Synopsys	 1	 1	 1	 1	
Prabal	 Cadence	 		1	 	
Scott Cranston	 Cadence	 1	 			
Adam Sherer	 Cadence	 1	 			
Martin O'Leary	 Cadence	 1	 1	 		
Dennis Brophy	 Mentor Graphics	 1	 1	 		
Kenneth Bakalar	 Mentor Graphics	 	1	 1	 1	
Kevin Jones	 Individual Contributor	 	1	 1	 1	
Patrick Holloway	 Tiburon Design Automation
1	 1	
David 	 Tiburon Design Automation	 			1	
Mark	 Tiburon Design Automation	 	1	 	1	
Dejan Nickovic	 Verimag	 	1	 	1	
Pallab Dasgupta	 IIT-KGP	 				
Sri Chandra	 Freescale	 1	 1	 	1	
Dave Miller	 Freescale	 1	 		1	
John Havlicek	 Freescale	 1	 1	 1	 1	
Hillel Miller	 Freescale	 1	 	1	 1	
Scott Little	 Freescale	 	1	 1	 1	
Himyanshu Anand	 Freescale	 1	 1	 1	 1	
Brian Mulvaney	 Freescale	 1	 	1	 	
Phillip LaPlace	 Freescale	 		1	 	
Daniel Christopher	 Freescale	 	1	 		
Linda Lin	 Freescale	 		1	 	
Saurabh Garg	 Freescale	 	1	 1	 1	
Benjamin Ehlers	 Freescale	 	1	 1	 	
Zhang Yonggang	 Freescale	 				
Bill Read	 Freescale	 1	 			
Fais Yaniv	 Freescale	 				
Mark Kole	 NXP	 				
Jasmine	 NSC	 		1	 	
David Tamura	 NSC	 				
Kevin Cameron	 True Circuits	 		1	 1	
David Jonathan	 Qualcomm	 1	 			
Laisne Michael	 Qualcomm	 1	 			
Li Xiang	 Qualcomm	 1	 			
						
	Attendance 	 19	 18	 21	 20	
 
Himyanshu Anand
EDA Strategy, Vendor Relation and Customer Collaboration,
Design Technology Organization,
Freescale Semiconductor
 
7700 W. Parmer Lane,
Loc/MD: TX32/PL34,
Austin, TX - 78729
email: Himyanshu.Anand@freescale.com
Ph    : +1-512-996-5623
Fax   : +1-512-996-7432
 

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