Defining coverage views to improve functional coverage analysis

Abstract

Coverage analysis is used to monitor the quality of the verification process. Reports provided by coverage tools help users identify areas in the design that have not been adequately tested. Because of their sheer size, the analysis of large coverage models can be an intimitating and time-consuming task. Practically, it can only be done 6y focusing on specific parts of the model. This paper presents a method for defining views onto the coverage data of cross-product functional coverage models. The proposed method allows users to focus on cenain aspects of the coverage data to extract relevant, useful infonnation, thereby improving the quality of the coverage analysis. A number of examples are provided that show how the proposed method improved the verification of actual designs.