Why The UVM Is Ready For Production Use Today - Part 1

As I mentioned in my DAC report, I spent the largest percentage of my time at the OVM-UVM booth, educating attendees on the status of the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) and answering their questions. Many people had heard about the UVM, although some were unclear on its relation to the Open Verification Methodology (OVM). I was happy to emphasize the tight link between them.

In fact, the booth showed the two logos side by side, with my phrase "One Common Methodology Uniting All Verificaton" to make the point that if you love the OVM, then you love the UVM because it's the same methodology with a few small additions (and more to come). I really believe that no one should have any reservations about moving forward with the UVM.

I had the chance to meet and talk with many of the guest speakers in the booth, and I asked those from consulting and training companies what they were seeing in their client base. Several told me that they have multiple customer projects already started with the UVM, which I was glad to hear. Clearly the UVM is on fire, also evidenced by the amount of activity on UVM World.

To be fair, not everyone I met was convinced. Across this group of people I heard three common questions, which I would like to address over my next few posts since the answers relate directly to why the UVM is ready for production use on real projects today. The first common question was "What does the UVM mean for the future of the OVM and VMM?"

I actually asked this question myself from the floor at the "Meet the Experts" session, noting that we would not get an answer from Synopsys on VMM since they declined my repeated invitations to send an expert to participate in the session. However, Sharon Rosenberg from Cadence and Tom Fitzpatrick from Mentor did give their opinions on the future of the OVM.

What they said made perfect sense to me. Both companies will continue to support the OVM as long as there are users, but efforts will be focused on adding new features to the UVM instead. In other words, don't expect any future releases of the OVM except perhaps for bug fixes. Tom wrote a very clever blog post about his response and the lack of one from our friends at Synopsys.

So the bottom line is that OVM users will not be forced to switch to the UVM, but frankly I encourage them make this seamless transition as soon as they can since it will offer them access to a few new features today and more in the future. In my next post I will address the second common question that people asked me at DAC.

Tom A.

The truth is out there...sometimes it's in a blog.