UVM = OVM 2.1: Even Better!

Since I'm not a member of the Accellera VIP TSC, I did not attend the 2.5-day face-to-face meeting held last week in Massachusetts. But with the steady stream of tweets coming from several of those who did attend, I almost felt as if I were there. That experience will be subject of my next blog entry, but for today I want to touch on some of the interesting news from the face-to-face. Perhaps the most exciting was that the group has apparently decided to base its Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) on OVM 2.1 rather than on OVM 2.03 as voted back in December.

This is a welcome move since it adds some important and widely used features to the initial release of the UVM father than delaying them for the future. In fact, I have been vigorously advocating exactly this action for a while. I've also been suggesting that Accellera get UVM 1.0 out as quickly as possible, and then worry about adding major features such as a register-memory package that will require lots of discussion and even more validation. It sounds as if the TSC is on the right path here as well, with a stated goal to get the first UVM release out by the end of April. 

As far as I can tell, the TSC has not made a strong statement about the UVM being fully compatible with OVM 2.1 as it exists today and is being used by countless thousands of users. I still think that full compatibility makes sense on order to foster rapid adoption of the UVM when it is released. Despite this concern, based on what I've gathered from the tweets and those who attended, the Accellera VIP TSC seems to have wisely separated a fast initial UVM release looking a whole lot like OVM 2.1 from all the additional features to be added in future releases. That's good news!

Tom A.

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