Intelligent Verification, also referred to as intelligent testbench automation, is a form of functional verification

Functional verification

Functional verification, in electronic design automation, is the task of verifying that the logic design conforms to specification. In everyday terms, functional verification attempts to answer the question "Does this proposed design do what is intended?" This is a complex task, and takes the...

 used to verify that an electronic hardware

Electronic hardware

Electronic hardware refers to interconnected electronic components which perform analog and/or logic operations on received and locally stored information to produce as output and/or store resulting new information and/or to provide control for output actuator mechanisms.Electronic hardware can...

 design conforms to specification before device fabrication. Intelligent verification uses information derived from the design and existing test description to automatically update the test description to target design functionality not verified, or “covered” by the existing tests.

Intelligent verification software has this key property: given the same test environment, the software will automatically change the tests to improve functional design coverage in response to changes in the design. Other properties of intelligent verification may include:

• Providing direction as to why certain coverage points were not detected.
• Automatically tracking paths through design structure to coverage points, to create new tests.
• Ensuring that various aspects of the design are only verified once in the same test sets.

“Intelligent Verification” uses existing logic simulation

Logic simulation

Logic simulation is the use of a computer program to simulate the operation of a digital circuit. Logic simulation is the primary tool used for verifying the logical correctness of a hardware design. In many cases logic simulation is the first activity performed in the process of taking a hardware...

 testbenches, and automatically targets and maximizes the following types of design coverage:

• Code coverage
  Code coverage
  Code coverage is a measure used in software testing. It describes the degree to which the source code of a program has been tested. It is a form of testing that inspects the code directly and is therefore a form of white box testing....
  
  
• Branch coverage
• Expression coverage
• Functional coverage
• Assertion coverage

History

Achieving confidence that a design is functionally correct continues to become more difficult. To counter these problems, in the late 1980’s fast logic simulators

Logic simulation

Logic simulation is the use of a computer program to simulate the operation of a digital circuit. Logic simulation is the primary tool used for verifying the logical correctness of a hardware design. In many cases logic simulation is the first activity performed in the process of taking a hardware...

 and specialized hardware description languages such as Verilog

Verilog

In the semiconductor and electronic design industry, Verilog is a hardware description language used to model electronic systems. Verilog HDL, not to be confused with VHDL , is most commonly used in the design, verification, and implementation of digital logic chips at the register-transfer level...

 and VHDL became popular. In the 1990’s, constrained random simulation methodologies emerged using hardware verification languages such as Vera and e

E (verification language)

e is a hardware verification language which is tailored to implementing highly flexible and reusable verification testbenches.- History :...

, as well as SystemVerilog

SystemVerilog

In the semiconductor and electronic design industry, SystemVerilog is a combined Hardware Description Language and Hardware Verification Language based on extensions to Verilog.-History:...

 (in 2002), to further improve verification quality and time.

Intelligent verification approaches supplement constrained random simulation methodologies, which bases test generation on external input rather than design structure. Intelligent verification is intended to automatically utilize design knowledge during simulation, which has become increasingly important over the last decade due to increased design size and complexity, and a separation between the engineering team that created a design and the team verifying its correct operation.

There has been substantial research into the intelligent verification area, and commercial tools that leverage this technique are just beginning to emerge.

Vendors offering Intelligent Verification

• Mentor Graphics
  Mentor Graphics
  Mentor Graphics, Inc is a US-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create...
  
  
• Synopsys
  Synopsys
  Synopsys, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the Electronic Design Automation industry. Synopsys' first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool. Synopsys offers a wide range of other products used in the design of an application-specific integrated circuit...
  
  (acquisition of NuSym)
• Breker
• Springsoft (acquisition of Certess)