Verification-Driven Interface Convergence: Methodology for Validating Functional Interoperability And Accelerating Subsystem Design for Concurrently Developed Compute and Component IPs in Coherent Subsystem

To meet aggressive time-to-market goals, modern mobile SoC architectures require the concurrent development of custom Compute-IPs and surrounding subsystem integration logic (1PIPs and 3PIPs). However, this parallel execution creates a critical verification deadlock: the subsystem cannot be validated until both the Compute-IP and volatile, in-flight 1PIPs reach physical RTL maturity. Consequently, "integration-killer" bugs—such as protocol handshaking deadlocks and clock/reset sequencing mismatches—remain hidden until late in the design cycle when RTL rework costs are prohibitive. To break this bottleneck, we present a verification-driven methodology utilizing a silicon-proven Golden Proxy, Direct-Execution Traffic Profiles, Programmable Sequencers and Automated Protocol Converters. This framework completely decouples parallel hardware dependencies, pre-pulling critical inter-IP mismatch discoveries months ahead of traditional integration milestones.

• Hardware and Architecture