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Speaker:

Dr. Ken Kundert - Designer's Guide Consulting, Inc.
What the Digital Verification Engineer Needs to Know about Analog Verification

Abstract:

Functional complexity in analog, mixed-signal, and RF (A/RF) designs is increasing dramatically. Today's simple A/RF functional block such as an RF receiver or power management unit can have hundreds to thousands of control bits. A/RF designs implement many modes of operation for different standards, power saving modes, and calibration. Increasingly, catastrophic failures in chips are due to functional bugs, and not missed performance specifications.

Functionally verifying A/RF designs is a daunting task requiring a rigorous and systematic verification methodology. This change mirrors the change that occurred in digital design 10-15 years ago. In this presentation we will show why the problem has become so significant, and how design groups are applying analog verification to control the problem.

We will also discuss how the analog verification engineer and the digital verification engineer are working together to tackle the challenge of chip level verification. Analog verification focuses on verification planning, model and regression test development, mixed-model/transistor level simulation, and co-verifying the analog system with the digital system. Examples of regression tests and models will be provided as part of this presentation.

Bio:

• Ken is well renowned for creating two of the most innovative, influential and highest grossing circuit simulators ever produced: Cadence's Spectre and Agilent's harmonic balance simulator.
• He also played a key role in the development of Cadence's AMS Designer and made
  substantial contributions to both the Verilog-AMS and VHDL-AMS languages. 
• While in school he authored Sparse, an industry standard sparse linear equation solver.
• Ken has worked as a circuit designer at Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard while contributing to the design of the HP 8510 microwave network analyzer.
• He has authored three books on circuit simulation: The Designer's Guide to Verilog-AMS in 2004, The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectre in 1995, and Steady-State Methods for Simulating Analog and Microwave Circuits in 1990; as well as having created The Designer's Guide Community website. 
• Ken was elevated to the status of IEEE Fellow in January 2007 for contributions to simulation and modeling of analog, RF, and mixed-signal circuits.

Speaker

Bio:

• Dave has spent 15 years doing verification and modeling since graduating from UMIST in 1993.
• He began his career working on an early SoC methodology at one of the first ARM licensees; since then he has worked on verification of DSPs, microcontrollers and network processors at various companies.
• For the past 5 years he has worked as a Verification Architect at NVIDIA, focusing on unit level simulation environments and transaction level modeling with assertions.
• David also works as Track Chair for the Functional Verification track at DesignCon
• View David Whipp's presented papers from the past few years here.
• Transaction Assertions in an Interface Definition Language: (with slides) from DesignCon 2008.