Design Verification Complexity and Solutions with Technology Advancement

 By Veripoint Technologies In the high-stakes world of semiconductor design, verification gets a lot of attention — and rightly so. But within that verification process, there’s one foundational step that often gets skipped, rushed, or undervalued: Validating the verification testbench architecture —  before  test development begins. At Veripoint, we emphasize this to every engineer, lead, and verification team we work with. Why? Because this single practice can mean the difference between a smooth project and weeks (or months) of debugging pain. Why Validate the Testbench First? Most verification challenges aren’t about the tests — they’re about the environment the tests run in. When the testbench architecture isn't validated upfront: Interfaces misbehave due to incorrect assumptions. Data gets lost in translation between modules. Stimulus flows into the wrong places or at the wrong time. Bugs go unnoticed — or worse, false failures flood the logs. But when validation ha...

By Veripoint Technologies Verification isn’t new. Challenges in verification? Even less so. But what  is  new — and rapidly changing — is the sheer scale and complexity of what we’re trying to verify. As the semiconductor industry steps into the era of  PCI Express Gen7 , boasting speeds of up to 128 GT/s and complexities that rival small SoCs on their own, we find ourselves asking: Are our traditional verification approaches still holding up? Are our engineers — from individual contributors to VPs — empowered to meet these evolving challenges? The New Wave of Complexity PCIe Gen7 isn’t just an upgrade — it’s a leap. With it comes: Ultra-high-speed interfaces  that demand hyper-accurate timing and protocol checks. Massive protocol enhancements  that increase verification scope and depth. Tighter integration with AI, storage, and memory ecosystems , creating interdependencies. Shorter market windows  with zero room for late-stage bugs or re-spins. Yet many v...