Successful application of block-level verification reuse improves the effectiveness of the top-level environment by providing additional checks, coverage and messages (and in some cases stimulus) which, as well as detecting more bugs, helps speed up debug for other system-level defects by providing improved internal visibility and enhanced bug isolation. Despite these benefits consistent efficient reuse is simply not being achieved in many companies. This paper revisits the vertical reuse problem from a fresh standpoint and addresses the fundamental issues involved, provides a comprehensive set of pragmatic reuse guidelines and also suggests how to go about retrofitting reuse to existing block-level environments.

( Mark Litterick )