Generic testControlProc – can this be a pattern?

[Ajeetha Kumari]

Hi there,
Coming from SV/UVM and the concept of design patterns applied to testbenches, am looking for common patterns in a typical OSVVM TB. Things such as:

1. ClockGen
2. ResetGen
3. EndOfTestReport

I believe the above 3 are straightforward (need to add #3 to my generator yet). What about some of the initialization code that I see in TbUart example:


------------------------------------------------------------
-- ControlProc
-- Set up AlertLog and wait for end of test
------------------------------------------------------------
ControlProc : process
begin
-- Initialization of test
SetTestName("TbUart_UartX16_1") ;
SetLogEnable(PASSED, TRUE) ; -- Enable PASSED logs
UartScoreboard <= NewID("UART_SB", NUM_UARTS) ;

-- Wait for testbench initialization
wait for 0 ns ; wait for 0 ns ;
TranscriptOpen(OSVVM_RESULTS_DIR & "TbUart_UartX16_1.txt") ;
SetTranscriptMirror(TRUE) ;

-- Wait for Design Reset
wait until nReset = '1' ;
ClearAlerts ;

-- Wait for test to finish
WaitForBarrier(TestDone, 100 ms) ;
AlertIf(now >= 100 ms, "Test finished due to timeout") ;
AlertIf(GetAffirmCount < 1, "Test is not Self-Checking");

TranscriptClose ;

-- Create yaml reports for UART scoreboard
osvvm_uart.ScoreboardPkg_Uart.WriteScoreboardYaml(FileName => GetTestName & "_sb_Uart.yml") ;
EndOfTestReports ;
std.env.stop ;
wait ;
end process ControlProc ;

Can this be generalized and made to an entity of its own, with some inputs, and each TB/test can instantiate and pass custom args? Do you believe this is a common pattern in OSVVM TBs?

Thanks
Ajeetha

[Jim Lewis]

Some of what is in the ControlProc is pretty standard. Some of it is not.
The main items above that are custom are:

UartScoreboard <= NewID("UART_SB", NUM_UARTS) ;
. . . 
osvvm_uart.ScoreboardPkg_Uart.WriteScoreboardYaml(FileName => GetTestName & "_sb_Uart.yml") ;

Long term, we should be able to do the UartScoreboard as a constant:
constant UartScoreboard : work.ScoreboardPkg_Uart.ScoreboardIDType := NewID("UART_SB", NUM_UARTS) ;

Actually we can do right now as it works in the simulators. However, there is a sentence in the LRM that says you are not allowed to call the method of a protected type in a declaration region – NewID at a minimum does that indirectly.

So far I have not been willing to step into the void of what works but is not officially supported by the language – however this one is special as it is an approved change and I have already done the edit to the LRM for the next version of VHDL.

[Jim Lewis]

Depending on what becomes the pattern, it could be a concurrent procedure call (if it encapsulates the entire process), a sequential procedure call (if it only encapsulates most of the process), or as you suggested an entity (but may be more than we need).

Also note that OSVVM’s TbUtilPkg has a CreateClock and a CreateReset

[Ajeetha Kumari]

Thanks, aligns with my thoughts. Yes the generator already creates/uses clock/reset procedures.

Regards
Ajeetha

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