A short time-to-market is very important for a chip, and verification takes the most (about 70%) of its design time. Network interface controller (NIC) is a key component for a supercomputer and other computing systems. To reduce verification time for such a market-demanding product plays a great role in relevant system design. In this paper, a functional verification accelerator NICFlex is presented for a register transfer level (RTL) NIC design. NICFlex accelerates verification process by both a software part and a hardware part. The software part runs as a simulation thread, and the hardware part is mapped into field programmable gate array (FPGA) logic together with a NIC wrapper. Compared to a conventional simulation verification method using ModelSim, NICFlex can accelerate the functional verification of an RTL NIC design for hundreds of times or more. With extension, NICFlex is promising for any functional verification acceleration of a generic RTL design.
['Xianyang Jiang', 'Xiaomin Li', 'Yue Tian', 'Kai Wang']
NICFlex: A Functional Verification Accelerator for An RTL NIC Design