PEak: A Single Source of Truth for Hardware Design and Verification

Abstract

The technical challenge of maintaining consistency between fragmented data models for hardware design, specification, and verification is addressed. This paper introduces PEak, a novel framework established as a 'Single Source of Truth' (SSOT) for all related hardware artifacts. PEak aims to significantly reduce synchronization errors, ensure data integrity across the development lifecycle, and ultimately streamline the hardware design and verification process.

Report

Report: PEak: A Single Source of Truth for Hardware Design and Verification

Key Highlights

• Single Source of Truth (SSOT): PEak is fundamentally designed to consolidate all hardware development artifacts—from high-level specifications and constraints to Register Transfer Level (RTL) and verification environments—into a single, unified repository.
• Data Fragmentation Solution: The core innovation tackles the industry-wide problem of fragmented data silos, which often leads to errors, inconsistent implementations, and extended debug cycles.
• Design and Verification Unification: PEak emphasizes linking design implementation directly with verification requirements and coverage models, ensuring that verification status accurately reflects the design intent.
• Efficiency and Reliability: By eliminating manual synchronization between design views, PEak promises significant improvements in development efficiency and the overall reliability of complex semiconductor projects.

Technical Details

• Centralized Data Model: The foundation of PEak is likely a highly structured, machine-readable intermediate representation (IR) or database that encapsulates all aspects of the design. This contrasts with traditional file-based or proprietary tool formats.
• Automated Generation: PEak is expected to support automated generation pipelines, where specific outputs (e.g., testbenches, documentation, formal models, synthesized RTL subsets) are derived directly from the SSOT, minimizing human error.
• Constraint Management: A key capability is the robust management of design constraints and configuration parameters, ensuring that all generated outputs adhere strictly to the defined requirements.
• Tool Agnostic Interface: To function as an effective SSOT, PEak must provide well-defined APIs or integration layers that allow diverse Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools (simulators, synthesizers, formal verifiers) to consume and contribute data without breaking the central consistency.

Implications

• Standardization in RISC-V: For the rapidly expanding and often collaborative RISC-V ecosystem, an SSOT like PEak provides crucial infrastructure for managing open-source designs, ensuring that different contributors and implementers are always working off the same verified specification.
• Accelerated Development Cycles: By automating the linking of specification to implementation and verification, PEak significantly cuts down the time spent debugging synchronization errors, accelerating the path from architectural concept to silicon tape-out.
• High Assurance Systems: PEak is highly relevant for safety-critical and high-assurance domains (like automotive or aerospace) where auditable traceability from requirements to verified implementation is mandatory. A unified source inherently simplifies compliance and verification evidence generation.
• Enabling Formal Methods: A centralized, structured data model facilitates the easier application of advanced verification techniques, such as formal verification, which often require consistent and unambiguous input definitions.