Code Coverage of Assertions Using RTL Source Code Analysis

Abstract

Assertions are gaining importance in pre-silicon hardware verification to ensure expected design behavior. Coverage of an assertion in terms of statements of a Register Transfer Level (RTL) source code is a very accessible metric for understanding the scope of assertions and for debug. However, few methods to report it currently exist. We present a methodology to define and compute code coverage of an assertion. Our method is based on static and dynamic analysis of the RTL source code. We demonstrate the scalability and effectiveness of our approach with experimental results on real designs for both manual and automatically generated assertions.