"Semiconductor Intellectual Property Market Summary 2024-2031": The global Semiconductor Intellectual Property market size was valued at USD 5843.12 million in 2023 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.79% during the forecast period, reaching USD 9164.67 million by 2031.
Today’s ASIC and SoC designs contain many complex industry standard interfaces to communicate with external devices (like USB, PCIe etc.) or standard buses (like AHB, AXI etc.). During design verification process these interfaces are also used to connect with the test environment (testbench). This connection is realized via modules called Verification Ips.
Verification IP (VIP) is a pre-packaged set of code used for verification. It may be a set of assertions for verifying a bus protocol, or it could be a module intended to be used within a defined verification methodology, such as UVM. This would often contain stimulus sequences, bus functional models, a set of checkers, coverage model and other things associated with a particular block in the design, such as a USB interface.
Verification IP (VIP) from different vendors provides verification engineers access to the industry's latest protocols, interfaces and memories required to verify their SoC designs. Deployed across thousands of projects, VIP supports Arm® AMBA®, CCIX, Ethernet, MIPI®, PCIe®, USB, DRAM and FLASH memory, automotive, display, storage, and other BUS/interface protocols.
In addition, VIP vendors offers a set of Test Suites providing tests for items in the specification to help accelerate testbench development and closure. Test suites are used together with the VIP.
VIP is considered a valuable component of a verification methodology as it describes libraries of reusable verification components and pre-defined functional blocks instrumental in validating the correctness of complex interfaces and protocols found in system-on-chip (SoC) designs. Along the way, they improve debug, quality and coverage closure, accelerate project delivery, increase return on investment and reduce the risk of silicon respin.
A testbench for a complex SoC requires a variety of VIP blocks to verify system-level functionality and validate target performance by generating application-specific traffic and checkers. Blocks are inserted into the testbench for a design to check the operation of protocols and interfaces, both discretely and in combination. They enable verification engineers to inspect basic features, such as system start-up or more detailed exploration. This is increasingly important because of growing design complexity.
VIPs generate tests that stimulate and verify different interfaces and standard bus protocols, such as transactions/sequences, drivers and configuration components. A test plan for a specific interface and test suites connects to a design under test/verification (DUT) inside the testbench to simulate or emulate an IP or an SoC design. The result is an infrastructure for industry-standard interface and interconnect protocol support and a known reference to compare with the DUT.
“Design IP developers for an emerging or existing specification”, “early adapters and integrators”, “sub-system developers” and “SoC developers” are the four main user groups for VIP.
With verification consuming approximately 70% of a project’s schedule, Verification IP has become an essential piece of today’s verification strategy. Chip design verification groups employ it in the verification environment to improve quality, reduce the risk of silicon re-spins, accelerate project delivery, and increase return on investment (ROI).
At SSWITCH Technologies, we work to bring up the improvised and efficient Verification IPs.
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