DMA Sub System Verification

Executive Summary

Our customer is a pioneer in the design of market leading H.264 compression SOCs for the security market and is a recognized leader in resultant video quality, power consumption, and cost-per-channel.

The DMA Sub-system of this chip is AHB based. It contains SATA, GMAC, DMAC and USB connected modules. There is a separate ICU (Interrupt Controller Unit) and MMU (Memory Management Unit) in the subsystem. Each module has an AHB slave that is connected to ARM processor for configuration. Also the chip has PCI and PCI-Express blocks. The AHB-PCI block has a 32 bit, 33 MHz interface on PCI side. The PCI -Express block has an AXI interface on the system side for configuration as well as data transfer.

Our customer’s major objective was to achieve faster product releases and a reduced time-to-market.

eInfochips successfully performed sub-system level verification of the DMA -SS, functional verification of the AHB-PCI module and functional verification of PCI-E module exceeding all expectations set by the customer. Through our Amplified Offshoring Model (AOM), we were able to significantly reduce time to market and bring down costs, and simultaneously maintain high standards of quality deliverables.

The Customer

The customer focuses on creating energy efficient multimedia processors. It develops low-power H.264 video compression ICs. It offers coprocessor, which provides a low power solution for standard definition encoding, and decoding or full duplex applications; and H.264 codecs that provides high definition or multi-channel SD encoding and decoding in system on chip (SoC) solutions.

The Challenge

  • Integration of various device models in VMM methodology
  • Simultaneous operation of all the modules in the DMA-SS
  • Frequent changes in product specifications resulting in test environment changes 

The Solution

We offered the following ASIC Verification services:

  • Prepared verification plans for DMA-SS and AHB-PCI
  • Developed verification environment for all the three blocks using VMM & SystemVerilog
  • Created test cases to verify DMA-SS and PCI modules
  • Created system level test bench to verify combined functionality of all modules in the DMA-SS

Technology

  • Industry:  Networking
  • Technology: AHB, SATA, Ethernet, PCI, PCI-Express
  • Methodology: Verification Methodology Manual for SystemVerilog
  • Languages:  SystemVerilog
  • Tools:  VCS

The Benefit

  • eInfochips offered a complete verification solution leveraging its highly successful AOM model and by deploying an optimized mix of offshore/onsite model, leading to uninterrupted customer core development efforts and early market launch
  • Achieved 100% functional coverage and code coverage