What happened to the intelligent test bench?

Abstract

In 1996 a group of EDA Industry experk, primarily from the Formal Verification field, looked at the future of verification. The first conclusion was that there were no silver bullets. The answer to the Verification Crisis would have to be a suit of tools, each attacking the problem from a different perspective. Out of that discussion came the concept of the Intelligent Test bench. The idea of the Intelligent Test bench was a test bench that would look at a design, parfition if into verification blocks and then invoke the verification tool most suited for the particular verification challenge. To do this if was assumed that it would be necessary to use an ES Level Verification tool to provide the view of the design for proper partitioning. What actually happened was something a bit different.