Hardware/Software Co-Verification of CDMA ASIC Designs

Through the development of three generations of code-division multiple-access (CDMA) IC families, we adopted hardware/software co-verification as part of our design process. Our initial goal was to provide the software team earlier access to an executable specification of the hardware for early low-level driver debugging. After using co-verification through the first generation of our chips we realized its benefits in the hardware design process as well. Another interesting side effect of using co-verification was the collaboration of the hardware and software teams at an earlier phase of the design cycle. In this paper we will describe our experiences with hardware/software co-verification as we applied them to our design process. We will also detail what we believe to be important criteria when selecting and implementing a co-verification strategy, as well as the limitations of this technology and our view of needed future enhancements.