Simulation-based Verification of SystemC-based VPs at the ESL

Abstract: SystemC-based Virtual Prototypes (VPs) at the Electronic System Level (ESL) are increasingly adopted by the semiconductor industry. The main reason is that VPs are much earlier available, and their simulation is orders of magnitude faster in comparison to the hardware models at lower levels of abstraction (e.g. RTL). This leads designers to use VPs as reference models for early design verification. Hence, the correctness of VPs is of utmost importance as undetected errors may propagate to less abstract levels in the design process, increasing the fixing cost and effort. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive simulation-based verification approach to automatically validate the simulation behavior of a given SystemC-based VP against both the TLM-2.0 rules and its specifications, i.e. functional and timing behavior of communications in the VP.