AI-based Test Content Synthesis: An Example of AI Complexity Management

EDA tools in general represent one of the extremes of complexity reduction through automation. However, there are areas of EDA where the sheer complexity of the problem is a daunting challenge for the best engineering minds, and it is these where AI can provide assistance. One of these is high-coverage test content generation for complex blocks and SoCs.

Breker’s Test Suite Synthesis technology makes extensive use of AI algorithms in order to chorale the relevant state-space that needs to be verified. Combining this content generation process with specification to relevant state-space synthesis allows an optimization in the number of tests generated for a given coverage objective for block simulation up to SoC emulation, thus allowing hard to envisage corner-cases to be fully explored.  This presentation will show how AI is applied to this problem and the resulting improvements.

3 Key Points:

• AI provides engineering support in the streamlining of highly complex EDA tool application, such as test content synthesis
• For test content synthesis, AI provides a fundamental technology platform that allows for the efficient generation of high-coverage test content
• This approach has been proven to accelerate block level simulation and uncover complex corner cases in SoC emulation

Dave Kelf, is the Chief Executive Officer at Breker Verification Systems. Previously Dave served as vice president of worldwide marketing solutions at formal verification provider OneSpin Solutions. Earlier, Kelf was president and CEO of Sigmatix, Inc. He worked in sales and marketing at Cadence Design Systems, and was responsible for the Verilog and VHDL verification product lines. As vice president of marketing at Co-Design Automation and then Synopsys, Kelf oversaw the successful introduction and growth of the SystemVerilog language, before running marketing for Novas Software, noted for the Verdi product line, which became Springsoft and is now part of Synopsys.

Dave holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Computer Systems from the University of Salford and a Master of Science degree in Microelectronics from Brunel University, both in the U.K., and an MBA from Boston University.