Coverage driven verification has a big advantage – you can write a single test, and let run it several times with random seeds. Each run will generate a slightly different scenario – depending on the nature of the constraints you provided. I’ve talked about the pros and cons of excessive use of coverage driven methods here and here. Anyway, sometimes you just want to take an existing test and quickly create a number of variants off of it to make a small regression suite (that you might even throw away later on). For example – you could have a basic test that does some CPU writes and then drives random frames. During configuration you write to a register that sets the FIFO level and you want to have 10 different tests, each writes a different value to this register.

Autodup is a neat utility can help you do that. What it does is stupidly simple, but it can still save you a bit of copy/paste headache.

Let’s see how it works. Here’s an excerpt from the test you want to duplicate (fifo_lvl.sv):

…
cpu_xactor.write_register(FIFO_LEVEL,30);
...

Now you want to have 10 different tests, each writes a different value to that register. No problem! Use the magic pattern:

…
cpu_xactor.write_register(FIFO_LEVEL,__AUTODUP{10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100});

...

Now run the utility:

% ./autodup fifo_level.sv

And voila! You get 10 different tests:

In fifo_level_10.sv you’ll have: cpu_xactor.write_register(FIFO_LEVEL,10);

In fifo_level_20.sv you’ll have: cpu_xactor.write_register(FIFO_LEVEL,20);

And so on…

Here’s another example:

Add the following magic pattern in fifo_level.sv:

…
if (something) __AUTODUP{func1(),func2(),x=y,$finish};

...

Use the –i option now to get friendly file names:

% ./autodup fifo_level.sv -i

And Voila:

fifo_level_1.sv: if (something) func1();

fifo_level_2.sv: if (something) func2();

fifo_level_3.sv: if (something) x=y;

fifo_level_4.sv: if (something) $finish;

To download Autodup simply click on the attachment below. After you download, please run %./autodup -help to get started, it's very easy.
If you encounter any problems or bugs, please let us know so we can get it fixed for you.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
AutoDup	Create test variants automatically	3 Kb