Certification

Certification Process: It is possible to verify OCP compliance by a number of different approaches. An important offering of OCP International Partnership (OCP-IP) is our own CoreCreator® verification software which enables users to investigate the interface of their IP cores, or Virtual Components, and validate compliance to the OCP Specification. CoreCreator® is available from OCP-IP at www.ocpip.org/corecreator/requestForm and a datasheet of the product can be found at www.ocpip.org/socket/datasheets/ and is available free to OCP-IP members. CoreCreator® is just one part of the many tools and services available to members for convenient implementation, maintenance and support of OCP.

Compliance Checks: In addition to CoreCreator®, OCP-IP offers Compliance Checks documents, featuring a chapter on Functional Coverage. This is also free to members. The Compliance Checks define a set of rules for the OCP specification. Constraints can be as simple as "check that a signal is never 0" or may be complex temporal expressions. If no check is violated by functional and/or formal verification, the logic is proven compliant with the protocol.

Compliance checks can be used in several different ways. Formal tools can employ the checks to verify a design never violates them, proving OCP compliance. Similarly, it is possible to use the same checks to note the number of times a given restraint is hit. Functional verification tools can use the properties to build protocol checkers (in Verilog/VHDL/E/SystemC, etc.).  By applying stimuli to the design under test (DUT) and verifying that protocol checkers are not reporting violations, OCP compliance can again be verified.

Commercial Products: In addition to tools and documented checks provided by OCP-IP, there is a large range of products available from commercial providers. The documentation and the version of OCP support provided will be specified by those vendors. Additionally, a number of EDA products supplied by our members are listed in our own OCP-IP library at www.ocpip.org/library/eda/.

Compliance Seal: Members who have validated OCP compliance for their products are entitled to advertise compliance and display the OCP-IP Compliance Seal. To request a copy of the OCP-IP Compliance Seal, please contact admin@ocpip.org.

PSL Offering: The Property Specification Language (PSL) is an IEEE standard language for hardware specification. This PSL allows the hardware architect to clearly specify properties, which the hardware should satisfy. This PSL description can then be used by the verification engineer to ensure that the RTL implementation of the hardware design satisfies its specification. This PSL description is an “executable specification” for the hardware design.

The PSL description for a hardware design can be used with both simulators and formal verification tools. This PSL language is available in different “flavors”, including Verilog and VHDL, so that the PSL specification code can easily be developed with the RTL code for the hardware design.

This PSL package provides the PSL hardware specification for the OCP protocol. It can be used to ensure that the hardware implementation of an IP core satisfies the OCP specification. The OCP specification is delivered in the form of PSL code, which specifies how the hardware for the OCP protocol should operate. Note that this OCP PSL package is complete and contains code for all four of the different layers found in PSL: the Boolean, temporal, verification and modeling layers. This PSL package is available in both the Verilog and VHDL PSL “flavors”.

Product Certification: OCP certification is a simple step-by-step process. Steps to certification:

• Join OCP-IP at www.ocpip.org/membership/become/. All new members are provided a Vendor ID number. This number should be displayed in your IP datasheet, and used when communicating with OCP-IP
• Validate the OCP interface using the compliance testing tool of choice (selected from above).  Again, there are a wide variety of compliance testing products available. Choices range from CoreCreator® to implementation of certification checks (available from OCP-IP’s Functional Verification Workgroup) through any number of commercially available third party vendors.
• Request the OCP-IP Compliance Seal from admin@ocpip.org.
• Build product datasheet – all IP cores (Virtual Components) verified to be OCP Compliant may claim OCP compliance and display the OCP-IP Compliance Seal in datasheets
• Benefits of certification:
• • All products validated to be OCP compliant provide a seal of approval to users and purchasers of those IP cores and other products
  • The OCP Compliance Seal ensures reuse of components and sub-systems, and minimizes rework and error fixes on the part of users and System on Chip (SoC) integrators
  • As the OCP standard is the only complete, open and proven IP core interface standard, this seal of approval is highly valued by engineers, purchasers and program managers

Native SystemC Assertions: The OCP Checker is an assertion-based package for checking OCP compliance within the SystemC environment. This SystemC OCP Assertion Checker is based upon the Native SystemC Assertions (NSCa), technology developed by JEDA Technologies, which allows verification assertions to be rapidly developed. The resulting class library can be directly linked into any existing SystemC environment.

This OCP Checker complies with the OCP 2.0 specification and contains over 70 individual compliance assertion checks, as specified by the OCP-IP Functional Verification working group. These assertion checks are in direct one-to-one correspondence with the checks defined in the OCP compliance checking specification.

This SystemC OCP Checker can be directly used to check for OCP 2.0 compliance in any SystemC based design. For example, a high-level SOC design containing multiple OCP IP cores, designed in the SystemC environment, can easily be checked for OCP compliance. Using this existing OCP checker is far more productive than attempting to generate such OCP compliance assertion checking directly in SystemC. In addition, assertion coverage reports can be automatically generated for simulation runs, which can be used to measure the OCP protocol coverage for a testbench.

Other: All available “verification checks” developed by OCP-IP Working Groups are provided free of charge to OCP-IP Members. Such verification checks are provided for the convenience of members to be used to help rapidly develop fully compliant products. It is expected that users of such checks will dramatically accelerate the development of their products and services, and their learning and understanding of implementation of the OCP Specification.