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Have you used software verification tools? They're almost universally terrible. In many cases incomprehensibly so. Many are free up front, but you pay for it on
by im_down_w_otp 7y ago
Have you used software verification tools? They're almost universally terrible. In many cases incomprehensibly so. Many are free up front, but you pay for it one way or another. The level of sophistication and workflow integration of software verification tools, compared to hardware verification tools, also seems to lag significantly.
I don't doubt that the hardware verification tools are expensive, buggy, and probably have terrible UX. However, all those things are also true of software verification tools, but where license cost is replaced by esoteria and incompleteness cost.
- vvanders 7y agoValgrind is pretty robust and I've seen it integrated into many projects with little fanfare. Unit tests are just simulation runs. I've done VHDL/Verilog and tons of software, the HW tools do lag significantly in my experience.
- im_down_w_otp 7y agoValgrind is not in the class of verification tools I was referencing. How does it correlate to VHDL/Verilog in this context? I would expect things like MBD tools, model checkers, and proof assistants, and program extractors to be the software pipeline siblings to the kinds of tools that VHDL/Verilog integrate with.
- vvanders 7y agoIt's a tool to verify the software runs correctly and doesn't double free, write over the heap and a while bunch of failure. Unless you never run simulation and always trust the router? Not everything gets verified 100% in HW, otherwise we wouldn't have silicon errata. It's all a question of how deep you want to go in verification and what your costs are for screwing it up.