Full chip verificaiton of Mobile Digital TV Reception SoC

Executive Summary

Our customer is a semiconductor company providing single chip SOC solutions to the Mobile Digital TV (MDTV) and portable multimedia market.

The chip is a low-power, low-cost SoC designed for complete Mobile Digital TV (MDTV) reception functions. This multi-interface MDTV solution includes baseband demodulator, video and audio decoding, A/V output, RF tuner control and data demultiplexer that allows easy implementation with mobile phones and portable media players.

The customer was interested in a strategic outsourcing partner with ample expertise on turnkey verification of complex SoC. On meeting all the selection parameters, eInfochips was eventually engaged to perform block level and full chip level verification using Verilog and MIPS Assembly languages. The holistic verification by eInfochips ASIC team ensured that the SoC had zero functional bugs in the first silicon resulting in a successful product launch.

The Customer

Our customer is dedicated to develop and integrate advanced mobile digital TV and multimedia technologies that best addresses today's demanding low-power / high performance needs of the portable device markets. With expertise in mobile communication, audio-video & image processing, as well as advanced processor design, they have created a flexible SOC architecture that combines numerous patentable technological innovations. Our customer’s IC supports many common movie formats such as RealVideo (RMVB), AVI, MPEG4, H.264, FLV, AVS, and MPEG – all at resolutions beyond DVD quality.

The Challenge

  • Randomizing traffic generation on the bus through perl scripts and assembly language test cases
  • Rendering block level test cases re-usable at chip level testing

The Solution

We offered the following ASIC Verification services:

  • Developed test plans for various blocks in the chip
  • Verified MISC block at module level and chip level. This block contained PLL, serial host interface through SPI, I2C,UART,8 bit parallel host interface (LCM interface), GPIO control registers, Interrupt control registers, Clock& Reset control registers for all the peripherals, IO drive strength and slew rate registers
  • Developed chip level test cases in assembly language for MIPS 4K processor. These test cases enabled traffic generation on the system bus to different peripherals of the SoC, Interrupt service subroutines for different interrupt sources such as GPIO, DMA, Video processor, DeMUX etc and booting of SoC with various configurations
  • Chip level verification of AES decryption block. This block could decrypt the cipher text in both ECB and CBC mode for all the key length 128, 192 and 256 bits
  • Verification of Flash controller at chip level with NOR Flash memories from different vendors
  • I2S block verification at chip level: This block supported on chip and off chip DAC selection, clock polarity selection for I2S data output, selectable data length(16/18/20/24 bits). This block also contained registers for DAC configuration (Sampling rate selection, De-emphasis filter, volume control, power consumption etc).
  • Module level verification of IMG to AHB bridge: This block is bridge between Imagination bus (IMG bus) and AHB compliant SDRAM controller.
  • Connection checking for all blocks and initial value check for all registers. Connection checking consisted testing of connections from IO pads to signals at leaf level for both functional and test mode for all the pins.
  • Developed Shell and Perl scripts for randomization and to automate the regression flow.

Technology

  • Industry: Consumer Electronics
  • Technology: MIPS4K processor, Video Processor, Time domain processor, SDRAM controller, NOR Flash controller, DAC, ADC, PLL, AES, I2S, LCM, UART, SPI, I2C
  • Methodology: Verilog based and processor driven verification
  • Languages: Verilog, MIPS 4K assembly language, C Shell script, Perl script
  • Tools: ModelSim, Novas Verdi, MIPS Assembler

The Benefit

  • Achieved consistent productivity (test cases developed per person week) that aligned with our customer's expectations.
  • Managed the entire randomized verification program