June 4, 2012 -- Accellera Systems Initiative announced the official debut of the Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (UCIS) version 1.0 at the 2012 Design Automation Conference (DAC). UCIS is a first step towards the creation of an application interface (API) that allows for interoperability of verification-coverage data across multiple tools from multiple vendors. UCIS offers chip designers a standardized way to model and access information among different tools to achieve full verification closure.
The UCIS coverage database (UCISDB) is conceptually a single repository of all coverage data from all verification processes. It is designed to operate across a variety of tools including software simulators, hardware accelerators, symbolic simulations, formal tools and custom verification tools. As verification and analysis technologies improve, the database implementation may also change, but the standardized API and the interchange format are intended to operate together, regardless of such changes.
UCIS allows users to write their own applications, to access information, and to analyze, grade, merge and report coverage from one or more databases from one or more tool vendors. The standard is built on an API and an XML-based interchange format, which provides a path to exchange coverage databases without requiring a common code library between tools and vendors.
For design teams, productivity improvements are intended to be realized via the API and interchange format within applications and scripts. A verification environment can then implement functions that consume coverage data such as producing reports, annotating the design, merging coverage data, ranking tests, and updating verification plans.
"I would like to congratulate the UCIS co-chairs and committee for their hard work in developing a greatly needed, collaborative standard for verification coverage," said Shishpal Rawat, chair of Accellera Systems Initiative. "UCIS will enable a common understanding of verification coverage and allow the EDA industry to innovate and help achieve high levels of the same. We anticipate that the standard will help boost engineering productivity through an emerging ecosystem of training, services, tools and new methods."
To facilitate the sharing of applications and scripts that utilize UCIS, Accellera Systems Initiative will host an open source repository where engineers and companies can make contributions to be shared with the community, improving the usefulness and benefits of UCIS.
The specification of the UCIS 1.0 is available for download from the Accellera website. Beginning immediately, companies, universities, and research organizations worldwide can freely access the standard and develop applications for UCIS-based tools and technologies.
Go to the Accellera website for details.
