Waves2UVM – a Go2UVM app

For long, engineers needed an easy and scalable way to capture timing diagrams as part of their design specifications. There have been few commercial tools to help in this task. A relatively new tool named WaveDrom has been developed as an open-source JSON based solution for this. Quoting WaveDrom.com site:

WaveDrom draws your Timing Diagram or Waveform from simple textual description.
It comes with description language, rendering engine and the editor.
WaveDrom editor works in the browser or can be installed on your system.
Rendering engine can be embeded into any webpage.

So essentially when you are creating a new design specification and want to capture the timing relationship as a waveform, this utility can be very handy. For instance, below is a screenshot of ARM APB 2.0 specification (for Figure 3-4 in ARM specification):

The above diagram is very easy to create using JSON like syntax with WaveDrom editor – we will offer a download of the JSON file soon here for APB 2.0 specification. For many seasoned digital designers, a diagram such as above is a great source of reference to create:

• Stimulus (i.e. apply the signal transitions as found in the specification to DUT – Design Under Test)
• Checks – assertions in the form of SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA) for instance.

As part of our mission to widen UVM adoption across teams, we developed a tiny “app” that reads WaveDrom file and creates a UVM Test through Go2UVM Test API. With this app (Soon to be released along with latest Go2UVM 2017.01 release), one can input this waves.wd file and get a SystemVerilog-UVM test that can be run on a compliant DUT (RTL model for instance). The usage is quite straightforward:

perl $VW_GO2UVM_HOME/bin/vw_dvc_wd_apps.pl

The above app creates the following infrastructure necessary to reproduce the same timing diagram in a typical UVM simulation:

• SystemVerilog interface file
• Go2UVM Test that toggles wires as per the specification in the WaveDrom file
• Top file that instantiates the test, connects the interface etc.
• Makefile to run on all popular EDA tools.

Some of the screenshots from the app when ran on an APB 2.0 waves is below:

Go2UVM Test:

So as we are about to roll-out our latest Go2UVM library 2017.01 during DVCon USA 2017, there is a lot to look forward to! Stay tuned for more updates.