Coverage driven verification applied to embedded software

The verification of complex systems, like embedded real time systems as well as SoCs, can not only be considered on hardware module level anymore. The amount of software has increased over the last years and, therefore, the verification of embedded software has got a fundamental importance. One of the main problems in embedded software verification is to stress and cover variables and functions in the embedded software that is already running on microprocessor models, during the design phase. In this paper we present a novel approach to verify embedded software running on a microprocessor model, based on a coverage driven verification technique. We have combined a new application called Generic Software Adapter with a SystemC PowerPC microprocessor model in order to cover difficult corner case scenarios in embedded software. This approach avoids setting several parameters and registers during the initialization when no microprocessor model is used. The embedded software is a case study from the automotive industry which is responsible for controlling read and write requests to a non-volatile memory.