Do you always try to fit your task with the tools you have? Or maybe you decide to move forward and try to think about your verification environment out of the box? The natural part of human nature is to categorize. This behavior helps us to understand the world, to adopt faster, and make decisions without bendable delay. In general, we black-box an idea and reuse it! Sounds great, but what is a cost tradeoff?
Let's move a little into the past until the time we learned and boxed the knowledge under some labels.
It does not matter if the label says "simulation "or "formal verification" or maybe "emulation". How long time ago was it? Five years? Ten? Maybe twenty-five? Now another question.
Is this the same technology today as it was in the past? Maybe the circumstances of use changed.
Nowadays, a lot of technology still encapsulated in our black boxes go more eclectic. We get used to thinking about the way we solve our problem using that or another methodology and technology, but we should think about what could we do to solve our problem. Let's try not to think by categories of UVM, Formal, or OSVVM. Let's try to think of what benefit we get from using in-house technology and where other approaches are applicable. There is no "one flow" from the title of this blog. We should get used to being more flexible. This flexibility is not for free. It requires us to leave our comfort zone for a moment. Stop and see how the EDA world changed since your last research. It is quite different – I guarantee!
