Semiconductor technology has progressed to the point where it is now possib
le to implement system-level functions on a single LSI chip. However, tradi
tional LSI verification becomes less and less powerful as the scale and com
plexity increase. In fact, more than half of the time required to develop a
System-on-a-Chip (SOC) is used for function verification. A new verificati
on methodology for SOCs should therefore be established.
We developed a system-level simulation technology to verify the specificati
on and architecture of an SOC and a logic emulation technology to verify th
e logic function of an entire SOC. By combining these technologies, we esta
blished a powerful verification methodology for an SOC. We applied the veri
fication methodology to develop a high-definition MPEG2 decoder LSI for a d
igital TV broadcasting system. The LSI was successfully developed on schedu
le and worked in the first silicon implementation completely according to t
he specifications.