Improvements for Constraint Solving in the SystemC Verification Library

Abstract

For verification of complex system-on-chip designs often constraint-based randomization is used. This allows to simulate scenarios that may be difficult to generate manually. For the system description language SystemC the SystemC Verification (SCV) Library has been introduced. Besides advanced verification features like data introspection and transaction recording the SCV library enables constraint-based randomization for SystemC models. However, the SystemC library has two disadvantages that restrict the practical use: There is no support of bit operators in SCV constraints and the SCV constraint solver cannot guarantee a uniform distribution of the constraint solutions. In this paper we provide a detailed analysis of these problems and present solutions that have been integrated in the library.