CCD, My read of Certess technology and positioning

 

With due respect to the technology behind Certess’s tool I have some discomfort with the way it is being positioned – atleast in the below article:

http://www.edadesignline.com/howto/215600203;jsessionid=TP12OA3IF1X3UQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN?pgno=2

Before I talk about my discomfort, let me state the positives: Not very often do we get to read such well written, all encompassing technical article, Kudo’s to Mark Hampton – he touches on every aspect of functional verification in this article, not so common in an EDA product “promotional” article – to which this article may be characterized to (unfortunately IMHO). Having said that, I personally believe Certess should position the technology “along with” existing ones than challenging/trying to replace time tested/well adopted methodologies such as code cov, functional cov etc. Not that I differ from his views on the shortcomings of these technologies, rather going by what Pradip Thakcker said in DVM 08 (http://vlsi-india.org/vsi/activities/2008/dvm-blr-apr08/program.html)

“Code coverage and functional coverage are useful techniques with their own strengths and weaknesses. Rather than worrying about their weaknesses, focus on the positives and use them today”..Pradip, during his “Holistic Verification: Myth or The Magic Bullet?”

I will be very glad if Certess focuses on their real strength of exposing lack of checkers in a Verification environment than trying to “eat” into the well established market of Code/Func coverage tools. Another rationale: Both the cov and qualification is compute intensive and given the amount of EDA investment that has gone into stabilizing and optimizing these features, it will be irrational to try and replace them with “functional qualification” (No offense meant, I have great respect for Mark – given his excellent article and ofcourse the product). With SpringSoft acquiring Certess hopefully their customer base/reach increases and that will throw up more success stories in the coming months/quarters. So good times ahead!