SOC Bus Transaction Verification Using AMBA Protocol Checker

This paper presents an ARM-based SOC bus transaction verification IP and the usage experiences in SOC designs. The verification IP is an AMBA AHB protocol checker, which captures legal AHB transactions in FSM-style signal sequence checking routines. This checker can be considered as a reusable verification IP since it does not change unless the bus protocol changes. Our AHB protocol checker is designed to be scalable to any number of AHB masters and reusable for various AMBA-based SOC designs. The keys to the scalability and the reusability are Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), virtual port, and bind operation. This paper describes how OOP, virtual port, and bind features are used to implement AHB protocol checker. Using the AHB protocol checker, an AHB simulation monitor is constructed. The monitor checks the legal bus arbitration and detects the first cycle of an AHB transaction. Then it calls AHB protocol checker to check the expected AHB signal sequences. We integrate the AHB bus monitor into Verilog simulation environment to replace time-consuming visual waveform inspection, and it allows us to find design bugs quickly. This paper also discusses AMBA AHB bus transaction coverage metrics and AHB transaction coverage analysis. Test programs for five AHB masters of an SOC, four channel DMAs and a host interface unit are executed and transaction coverage for DMA verification is collected during simulation. These coverage results can be used to determine the weak point of test programs in terms of the number of bus transactions occurred and guide to improve the quality of the test programs. Also, the coverage results can be used to obtain bus utilization statistics since the bus cycles occupied by each AHB master can be obtained.