Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) standard

The Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) standard, developed by Accellera's Verification IP (VIP) Technical Subcommittee (TSC), is available as a Class Reference Manual accompanied by an open-source SystemVerilog base class library implementation and a User Guide. The UVM standard establishes a methodology to improve design and verification efficiency, verification data portability and tool, and VIP interoperability.

The UVM Class Reference Manual is available for no cost at www.accellera.org/activities/vip/UVM_Class_Reference_Manual_1.0.pdf.

UVM puts in place a single, open standard to advance verification productivity within design teams and across multi-company design and verification collaborative efforts. In addition to the Class Reference Manual, a User Guide and open-source reference implementation are available to accelerate industry adoption.

The UVM leverages features from the baseline UVM 1.0 Early Adopter (EA) release, a direct derivative of the Open Verification Methodology (OVM). This allowed the Accellera VIP TSC to focus on adding features found in other common methodologies to satisfy the agreed functional requirements to shorten the standards development cycle.

The UVM fully qualifies the baseline features, corrects most of the known bugs and implements enhancement requests. Major new features include a Phasing mechanism, a Register Package (derived from Verification Methodology Manual (VMM) technology) and support for the Open SystemC Initiative's (OSCI) Transaction Level Modeling-2.0 (TLM-2.0) standard to model component transaction connectivity and communication. The Resource Manager is an upgrade to the configuration mechanism that makes it more general and includes a standardized command line interface. Additional new features include callbacks, message catching and functionality in the objection mechanism to manage end of test.

Additional information can be found at www.accellera.org/activities/vip/.

UVM is a trademark of Accellera Organization, Inc.

UVM Overview Graphic