- PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS VERIFICATION
- PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS SOFTWARE
- PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS CODE
- PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS SERIES
We use Verilog at HRT (or rather SystemVerilog), so given a tool that can simulate Verilog it’s possible to just write more Verilog to stimulate and check the design. While it is possible to be fully predictive about the behavior of the device given sufficient information about low-level implementation details, requiring that level of knowledge will greatly limit the abstractions we can use when building tests.Īnother approach that is still more widely used is HDL (hardware description language) testbenches. We might see that an output is different than expected, but why was it expected and what does it mean that it’s different? Lastly, this approach does not allow for the possibility of multiple correct results. And debugging is especially painful with all context removed. Parallel interfaces are difficult to deal with as the entire device is treated as a whole. Test vectors are still used today during some stages of chip manufacturing, however, for our purposes this approach is far too fragile. As a trivial example, a JK flip-flop could be tested as follows:
PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS SERIES
They are essentially time series truth tables. Test vectors provide a list of primary input values and expected primary output values over time. Perhaps the simplest approach is to use test vectors.
PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS VERIFICATION
Given our goals, we can then apply them to various verification methodologies. All of the testing in the world won’t help us if those tests aren’t frequently executed.
PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS CODE
Latent and/or unresolved bugs only compound our problems as new code is built on broken code.įinally, we want to make use of the computational resources we have at HRT. Of course, this must happen before deploying new hardware for trading, but it is also good to find bugs as soon as they are introduced into the codebase. We also want to be able to quickly find problems when they arise. If we can put that code to use in the context of verification, we’ll not only save time, we’ll save ourselves from bugs introduced during a second implementation. HRT develops code in C++ and Python, which interacts with all the same markets as our FPGAs.
One of the ways we want to make verification developers more effective is by reusing code whenever possible. Who doesn’t want to work in a system that makes it simpler to express what you want to do? Certainly everyone wants to maximize developer productivity, but it’s especially important for us as trading is particularly time-to-market sensitive. Not only do we need to build tests to verify correct behavior, we also want to create an environment that makes it easier to do so. This means that verification not only determines that a device is behaving as intended, but also that it abides by HRT’s risk checks, and follows all rules and regulations. The hardware we build is a part of numerous trading systems in the firm and interacts with many different exchanges and marketplaces throughout the course of any given day. Establishing functional correctness is clearly the top concern. There are a lot of choices when it comes to building a verification environment, so it’s worth considering what properties we’d like ours to have. Next, we’ll discuss different approaches to the problem, and describe how we have built out our environment to reach our goals. We’ll start by laying out the goals we have for our environment. This post will describe our verification environment and how we arrived at where we are today. This makes it susceptible to timing problems (both internal and external), which must be tested to gain confidence in the device.
PROPRIETARY FPGA SIMULATION TOOLS SOFTWARE
And while it is important to test all of a system’s functionality, it is perhaps doubly so for hardware, which has the additional complexity of parallelism on a scale generally not encountered in the software world. Broadly speaking, these can be divided into design and verification, which is to say, the construction and testing of an FPGA design respectively. FPGAs can be used to reduce latency, handle data bursts more effectively, and decrease system complexity (among other things).īuilding FPGA systems requires the application of various disciplines. They allow the user to create custom hardware without many of the costs and delays associated with building custom chips.
Field-programmable gate arrays ( FPGAs) are increasingly used in the areas of finance and trading.