Big Data Analytics, Multi-Vendor Environments, Verification Bottlenecks Linked to Design Changes, Milestone Predictions

Dec 13, 2017 – Campbell, CA.  IC Manage, Inc. today announced Envision Verification Analytics (VA), which utilizes big data technology to deliver near real-time visual analytics and interactive reporting of verification results with 10-100X the speed of traditional methods — enabling design teams to track local and global verification progress, and then quickly identify bottlenecks and root causes so that resources can be focused to accelerate verification schedules.

Envision-VA analyzes and reports combined results from verification tools spanning simulation, formal and emulation from any mix of vendors. These anytime, anywhere, data-driven insights — based on customizable metrics — link verification problem areas to recent design activity so that they may be efficiently resolved.

“System and semiconductor companies can run hundreds of thousands of regressions a day, and existing methodologies are not scaling with the increasing data,” said Dean Drako, President and CEO of IC Manage. “IC Manage Envision Verification Analytics uses big data algorithms to deliver customized, near real-time visual analytics and interactive reports across mixed vendor verification environments.

Drako continued, “Development teams can immediately tie verification progress bottlenecks directly to design changes, to quickly optimize their resources to accelerate tight schedules. Over time, Envision also enables milestone predictions.”

Mixed Verification Environments, Massive Data Explosion

Due to multi-site teams, merger activity, and the need to build verification environments with best-in-class tools, semiconductor and systems company verification environment infrastructure has grown in complexity, spanning multiple verification tools from a mix of vendors.

Highly complex verification projects at these companies can generate hundreds of thousands of log files and hundreds of gigabytes of data each day. This data explosion continues with many verification teams seeing the number of required simulations double over the past year.

With current methods lagging, the above factors can make it infeasible for large verification teams to obtain timely access to critical local and global verification regression, bug tracking and coverage information with traditional methods, especially with the need to extract and compile results from different vendors. The lack of scalability and uniformity leads to delayed and incomplete results, making it extremely difficult to meet quality goals and perpetually aggressive tight time-to-market schedules.

IC Manage Envision Verification Analytics: Accelerating Verification Schedules

IC Manage Envision-VA is part of the IC Manage Envision Big Data product suite. It provides verification teams with web-based access to relevant data and analytics at 10-100x the speed of other methods, enabling them to track verification progress, identify bottlenecks, and appropriately focus resources for accelerated schedules.

1. Near real-time access to ALL verification results data from anywhere

• Fast NoSQL data access. 100x faster than file analysis and at least 10x faster than traditional SQL backends. SQL access is deployed when relational aspects are key.

• Web-based, secure interface. Authorized team members get anywhere, anytime access to actionable, interactive reports based on the verification results data.

• Supports mixed vendor environments. Access relevant log file data from multiple EDA vendor verification tools, without the need to maintain custom interfaces.

• Spans verification tools. Collect data from all verification tools, such as simulation, formal verification and emulation

2. Visual analytics, Interactive reporting, Milestone estimations

Envision-VA uses big data techniques to structure the data and enables real-time analytics, reporting, and queries across massive peak data volumes.

• Regression analytics. Teams can set regression pass/fail milestones and see the changes in progress almost immediately.

• Bug tracking analytics. An engineer can assign a ticket for further debug when a test fails, or update the bug status to pass, fail, or needs investigation.

• Coverage. Identify coverage results against pre-set targets and plans. The targets can be set across any number of axes, such as line, branch, FSM, code, and functional.

Key milestone dates can be estimated by analyzing data trends across the spectrum of results.

3. Verification bottlenecks linked to design changes & activity

RTL designers can resolve verification bottlenecks even faster with direct links from the Envision verification analytics reports to their design and IP changes and activity. For example, a regression set that changes from pass to fail can be linked to design source files or test bench changes, for root cause analysis.

4. Customizable user interface and RESTful API

Envision’s default user interface can be customized for each team’s data fields and metrics with targets. It has a RESTful API to push verification results and log data into the tool, customize targets and integrate into business intelligence tools.

Envision’s visual analytics provide summary rollup reports of verification progress versus plans, teams and sub-systems, enabling management to immediately understand project progress and optimize resource allocation.

Availability

IC Manage Envision Verification Analytics is available immediately, as part of the IC Manage Envision product suite. For more information, please visit  Envision Verification Analytics.

Or view the  Functional Verification Big Data Analytics. whitepaper.

In other news today, IC Managed announced its  Big Data Labs. Envision Verification Analytics is the first new product to come out of the initiative.

About IC Manage

IC Manage provides high performance design management and big data analytics solutions for companies to efficiently collaborate on design and verification across their global enterprises, while maximizing their IP reuse. IC Manage customers include Altera, AMD, Cypress, Juniper, Microchip, Northrop, NVIDIA, Rambus, Samsung, Xilinx and other top semiconductor and systems companies. IC Manage Big Data Labs makes IC Manage’s big data technologies and expertise available to semiconductor companies in developing new software products. IC Manage is headquartered in Campbell, CA, with additional offices throughout the U.S., Asia, and Europe.  For more information visit us at  www.icmanage.com.