Advanced analysis techniques for cross-product coverage

Coverage analysis is used to monitor the quality of the verification process. Reports provided by coverage tools help users identify areas in the design that have not been adequately tested. Because of their sheer size, the analysis of large coverage models can be an intimidating and time-consuming task. This paper presents several techniques for coverage analysis. These techniques range from highly interactive and dynamic analysis that allows users to focus on certain aspects or areas of interest in the coverage model to fully automated coverage analysis, which identifies uncovered or lightly covered areas. The proposed techniques provide additional means for extracting relevant, useful information, thereby improving the quality of the coverage analysis. A number of examples show how the proposed method improved the verification of actual designs. © 2006 IEEE.