Can OSVVM Verification Component be used in VUnit based testbench?

Short answer is yes. OSVVM VC (including AXI4) use items from the other OSVVM libraries, so you will need to compile those. To compile OSVVM, I recommend using the the OSVVM-Scripts. Then in VUnit you can map the OSVVM libraries.

OSVVM VC report errors against the OSVVM AlertLogPkg. You will either want to use the OSVVM AlertLogPkg in your test cases or get the errors from OSVVM and report them in VUnits test reporting utility.

If you don’t start out using OSVVM’s AlertLogPkg and scripting, eventually you may want to try using them as with them you get OSVVM’s reporting. For details on this see: https://osvvm.github.io/Overview/Osvvm3Reports.html and in particular see

• Build Report: https://synthworks.com/papers/riviera/sim_RunAllTestsWithCov.html
• Requirements Report: https://synthworks.com/papers/riviera/reports/sim_RunAllTestsWithCov_req.html
• Test Report: https://synthworks.com/papers/riviera/reports/Axi4Full/TbAxi4_ManagerMemoryRandomTiming1.html
• HTML Log File: https://synthworks.com/papers/riviera/logs/sim_RunAllTestsWithCov_log.html

To understand the debug help this gives us the following is a series of test cases with errors:

• Build Report: https://osvvm.github.io/_static/questa/sim_OsvvmDemo.html
• Test Report: https://osvvm.github.io/_static/questa/reports/Axi4Full/TbAxi4_DemoErrorMemoryReadWrite1.html
• HTML Log File: https://osvvm.github.io/_static/questa/logs/sim_OsvvmDemo_log.html

Yes. OSVVM calls this capability our Model Independent Transaction Library. It defines a transaction API and a transaction interface. The transaction interface is a record that is intended to be a superset of the information a transaction will need. The transaction API handles everything a transaction needs to do to send a transaction and receive a response back.

Hence, the only thing a VC developer needs to do is write functionality that retrieves the transaction information from the record, executes the transaction, and puts the results (when appropriate) back into the record. All OSVVM VC do this, so there are a number of examples out there.

There are two great way to come up to speed on OSVVM. First you can read the documentation in OsvvmLibraries/Documentation. It is easiest to reading the README.rst (either in text) or on github rendered like html at: https://github.com/OSVVM/Documentation/tree/main

The other great way to learn OSVVM is to take our class Advanced VHDL Testbenches and Verification, see: https://synthworks.com/vhdl_testbench_verification.htm (class) and https://synthworks.com/public_vhdl_courses.htm#VHDL_Test_Bench_Training (schedule).

We offer sessions in UK through FirstEDA https://firsteda.com/online-vhdl-training/ and our partner PLC2 offers classes in Germany https://plc2.com/training/professional-vhdl-testbenches-and-verification-with-osvvm_pw/

OSVVM connects the transaction interface (a signal of a record type) directly connects the test sequencer (our examples use the name TestCtrl) to the verification component – each have ports of the same type – AddressBusRecType for MM/address bus type interfaces. All the information is passed in the record data structure – with dedicated fields for things like address, data, and configuration values.

So just like your RTL, a specific signal connects the test sequencer to a specific VC.

Currently for single cycle accesses we do:
Write(Mm1Rec, Addr, X"AA") ;

For bursts we support a number of mechanisms, such as:
WriteBurstVector(Mm1Rec, Addr, (X"AA", X"BB", X"CC", X"DD") ) ;

This is actually a short hand for:

PushBurstVecctor(Mm1Rec.WriteBurstFifo, (X"AA", X"BB", X"CC", X"DD") ) ;
WriteBurst(Mm1Rec, Addr, 4) ; 

OSVVM BurstFifos for AXI4 can be configured to either transfer words (defined by the interface width) or bytes (which are then accumulated into the interface data width).

For more information on OSVVM transactions see the Address_Bus_Model_Independent_Transactions_user_guide.pdf in the OsvvmLibraries/Documentation directory. Alternately you can do a see OsvvmLibraries/AXI4/Axi4/TestCases and search for the word Burst.

Currently to get the HTML and JUnit XML reports you must use OSVVM scripting. The problem is that both the scripts and the VHDL code writes to the files.