( DAC'19 Item 3c ) ------------------------------------------------ [02/20/20]
Subject: Real Intent Meridian RDC has 20X less noise gets Best of 2019 #3c
PRAKASH'S BREAKOUT (part I): Got a mess of comments about Meridian RDC plus
two user benchmarks on it. (Yay!) Long story short, Real Intent RDC won
those benchmarks by a mile. The two big (user reported) reasons why:
1. Runtime & turnaround time
"Real Intent Meridian RDC took only 1-2 days to comprehensively
verify all our reset domain crossing issues... Our prior
commercial RDC tool took ~ 2 weeks."
2. 20-25X less noise & fewer false violations to review.
"Our prior commercial RDC tool had a noisy report, with ~20X
more violations than Meridian RDC. Our designers spend a lot
of time just reviewing the false violations."
This didn't surprise me after I remembered a user Meridian RDC benchmark
from 10 months ago in April 2019 in ESNUG 0586 #2.
and all those 10x to 800x fewer false violations. Talk about less noise!
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A BIG JUMP: I called Prakash to tell him about this user benchmarking news.
"We, too, have seen Meridian RDC beating the competition in benchmarks, said
Prakash. "We're 4X faster, use 1/4 RAM they use, and our reports are a *lot*
less noisy than they are. It was our #1 best selling new tool for 2019."
AVOIDING RETRIBUTION: You may have noticed the Meridian RDC users did NOT
name the RDC competitors, but the two EDA vendors with RDC tools are either
Mentor Questa RDC and Synopsys SpyGlass RDC. (Sorry Sawicki. Sorry Aart.)
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QUESTION ASKED:
Q: "What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific EDA tools
you've seen this year? WHY did they interest you?"
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REAL INTENT MERIDIAN RDC
It's a good solution for reset domain crossing sign-off.
It can catch potential catastrophic errors that might be missed in
simulation or static timing analysis or clock domain crossing tools.
We use it to help us identify important reset issues early in our flow.
Meridian RDC automatically extracts resets and reset domains, performs
precise RDC analysis, then verifies that:
- Asynchronous resets will not cause metastability issues
when the resets are activated or de-activated.
- De-converging synchronized resets functionally correlate.
- Asynchronous resets are glitch-free.
Our device has lots of reset schemes, and the 6 reset schemes below
are each required to be verified:
1) IP reset, 2) SerDes reset 3) soft reset
4) hard reset 5) System reset 6) Debug reset
COMPARING REAL INTENT MERIDIAN RDC vs. OUR PRIOR RDC TOOL
-- Setup & Performance --
Meridian RDC dramatically reduced our verification/validation time
using a comprehensive verification method.
Real Intent Meridian RDC
- Took only 1-2 days to verify all our reset domain crossing issues.
- We ran an 10 M gate design on Meridian RDC with 2 cores. The
runtime was only few minutes.
- Meridian RDC runtime + verification time: ~ 1 hour
Prior commercial RDC tool
- Took ~ 2 weeks:
- Required a huge setup effort
- Needed lot of verification iterations, for example reset domain
testing using useful skews and random skew regression tests.
-- RDC report noise level --
Real Intent Meridian RDC
- Provides all the scenarios in a low-noise report; so we can focus
our time on the actual debug, for a better-quality device.
- It only had 5% of the violations of our prior commercial RDC tool.
Meridian RDC dramatically reduced our verification/validation time.
Our prior commercial RDC tool
- Had a noisy report, with ~20X more violations than Meridian RDC.
- Our designers spend a lot of time just reviewing false violations.
OVERALL RESULTS
Real Intent Meridian RDC:
- Takes RTL & SDC as input, plus we can define our root/primary
resets.
- It automatically propagates the resets through all
synchronizers -- handling multiple reset sequences
- Provides all the scenarios in a low-noise report; so
we can focus our time on the actual debug, for a better
quality device.
- We got a very good turnaround time; and had good silicon
results in the first iteration.
Using Meridian RDC gave us confidence in our overall reset domain
verification and sign-off methodology.
It gave us a RDC verification/sign-off tool with minimum set up
and minimum false violations.
I hope Prakash will apply his underlying technology to even more
areas of RTL signoff & verification.
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Real Intent Meridian RDC
We have 100s of thousands of reset domain crossing paths, so RDC
analysis is mandatory for us.
Our goal is to get full RDC coverage, with no design bugs.
RESET DOMAIN CROSSING ANALYSIS & SIGN-OFF APPROACH
Our typical approach has been to:
1. Build setup constraints to properly define clocks to maximize
RDC coverage with minimal noise. We want to avoid having any
issues hidden by the STA constraints, so these constraints are
not based on the SDC constraints.
2. Define design constraints that are functionally constrained by
reset configuration signals.
3. Properly configure the RDC tool to ensure all required items
are properly checked. As part of this, we perform a setup
check to ensure that our setup is done correctly.
4. Run structural checks with design constraints to confirm that
each signal or reset crossing was not a problem in the
functional mode.
MERIDIAN RDC VS. ANOTHER COMMERCIAL RDC TOOL
We evaluated Real Intent Meridian RDC's reset domain crossing tool
performance and results against another commercial RDC tool.
Our results are below.
A. Tool Performance
We ran approximately the same checks on Meridian RDC as the other
commercial RDC tool.
Meridian RDC got comparable results as the other commercial tool, plus
the full coverage we needed.
As for its relative performance:
- Meridian RDC was typically 4X faster
- Meridian RDC had only 25% of the RAM usage
This speed up enabled us to rerun a number of checks to improve our
set up. We are thorough and do many iterations of:
- Running a check
- Reviewing the violations
- Testing constraints
- Review whether it solved the problem or not.
B. RDC Violation Report Noise Level
Comparison 1.
Violation report "noise" comparison using design constraints -- and the
same upfront work for both tools:
- Real Intent Meridian RDC caught all errors -- and reported
only 4% of the # of violations compared with the other
commercial RDC tool.
Comparison 2.
We then used Meridian RDC's feature for using scenarios to reduce the
violation report 'noise' level further:
- We specified the reset schemes using Tcl code. Meridian RDC
translated it into a proper wave form and scenario.
- We manually added the constraints from our design specification.
Meridian RDC provides a mechanism for checking for mistakes
to avoid issues from this manual process
Violation report "noise" following this reduction step and without
design constraints:
- Real Intent Meridian RDC caught all errors and reported
only 2% of the # of violations compared with the other
commercial RDC tool.
MERIDIAN RDC -- USEFUL FEATURES
Multi-scenario runs
You can specify multiple scenarios to check simultaneously, so that
checking two scenarios doesn't take you twice the time.
GUI/Schematic Views
Meridian RDC has schematics that help you understand the violations and
locate the actual RDC issues quickly -- plus verify that our set up had
no issues. One example is that the tool displays different net colors
to see if an active reset is high or low.
Advanced filtering
Advanced filtering lets you check how many violations come from a
specific reset domain, which help you identify problematic blocks.
CONCLUSION
Overall, Real Intent Meridian RDC had faster tool performance and
substantially lower noise reports than the other commercial RDC tool,
while catching all the errors.
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Our mgmt is finally letting us look into RDC tools. From what we've
heard, the Real Intent RDC tool is the best.
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Meridian RDC has to be in that list this year.
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We just started a Meridian RDC eval. I'll let you know how it goes.
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2. RealIntent RDC
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For reset we like Meridian RDC.
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Prakash came over and ran his side of the RDC benchmark himself.
That's true customer support.
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The new rev of Meridian RDC is much faster now.
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Real Intent RDC won our technical benchmark.
Now my penny pinching management is haggling over price.
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Related Articles
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Ascent Lint less noisy vs. SNPS Spyglass makes Best of 2019 #3b
Real Intent Meridian RDC has 20X less noise gets Best of 2019 #3c
Real Intent's AutoFormal *formal* linting makes Best of 2019 #3d
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