The Property Specification Language (PSL) is an IEEE standard which allows
developers to specify precise behavioral properties of hardware designs. PSL assertions
can be embedded within code written in hardware description languages (HDL) such as
Verilog to monitor signals of interest. Debugging simulations at the register transfer
level (RTL) is often required to verify the functionality of a design before synthesis.
Traditional methods of RTL debugging can help locate failures, but do not necessarily
immediately help in discovering the reasons for the failures. The P2VSim tool presents
the ability to combine multiple Verilog signals not only instantaneously, but also across
multiple clock cycles, producing a graphical display of the state of active PSL assertions
in a given RTL simulation.
When using the P2VSim tool, users will write PSL assertions directly into their
Verilog source files. After the tool searches for and loads the embedded assertions,
execution trace monitors for the relevant Verilog signals are dynamically generated and
written back into the Verilog source code. P2VSim then invokes an RTL simulator,
Modelsim, to generate a simulation execution trace, requiring that the designer has some
hardware or software testbench already in place. Next, the input PSL assertions are parsed into time intervals that have logical and temporal properties. These intervals are
to be displayed graphically when PSL property checking is performed. Finally, the user
is allowed to step through simulation one cycle at a time, while the tool applies the
simulation execution trace to the instantiated time intervals, performing PSL property
checking at each clock cycle. From this, the user can witness the exact clock cycles
when PSL assertions are satisfied or violated, along with the causes of such results.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-05-606 |
| Date | 2009 May 1900 |
| Creators | Almeida, Oscar |
| Contributors | Liu, Jyh-Charn |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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