Synopsys, Inc.
Efficient realization of coverage collection in emulation

Abstract:

Coverage event counters for hardware verification emulations are implemented as linear feedback shift register-based counters generating encoded counter values indicative of a detected number of coverage events. To decode those counter values, a counter algorithm utilized to generate the encoded counter value may continue to be iterated after counting is complete until reaching a defined pattern, while counting the number of iterations (K) necessary to reach the defined pattern. The resulting counter value having the defined pattern is correlated with a mapping table to identify a numerical value, and an ordinal counter value indicative of the number of coverage events is determined based on the identified numerical value, less K.