Hardware verification with C++: A practitioner's handbook

Hardware Verification with C++: A Practitioner's Handbook

Volumn , Issue , 2006, Pages 1-341

  Mintz, Mike ^a   Ekendahl, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84889997006     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-36254-0     Document Type: Book

References (24)

1. On the topic of coding well, Writing Solid Code, by Steve McGuire, is a good tour of the lessons Microsoft has learned.
2. Principles of Functional Verification, by Andreas Meyer, provides an introduction to the broad topic of chip verification.
3. Writing Testbenches: Functional Verification of HDL Models, Second Edition, by Janick Bergeron, gives another view of the process of functional verification.
4. Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, by Roger S. Pressman, has a great section on the evolution of programming. This handbook also has references to landmark papers and books.
5. The SystemC and Testbuilder manuals have discussions on why C++ is good for verification. SystemC information can be found at www.systemc.org, and Testbuilder information can be found at www.testbuilder.net.
6. There are several standards for verification and simulation, such as IEEE 1364-1999 (for VHDL), IEEE 1995-2001 (for Verilog), IEEE 1076, P1647 (for the IEEE version of Cadence "e,") and P1800 (for SystemVerilog). The web site www.openvera.org provides the OpenVera specification.
7. The C++ Programming Language, also by Bjarne Stroustrup, is the best reference book on C++, including the STL.
8. Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Example, by Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo, is a great book by the experts for the rest of us.
9. C++ Primer (4th Edition), by Stanley B. Lippman, is another classic C++ book.
10. A good book for getting better at C++ once you know the basics is Effective C++: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs, by Scott Meyers.
11. Also by Scott Meyers, Effective STL: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library is similarly good for learning more about STL.
12. The web has a wealth of information about C++. The authors feel the best place to start is C++ creator's home page, at http://public.research.att.com/ ~bs.
13. The Mythical Man-Month, by Fred Brooks, is the classic handbook that talks about why one should not put additional people on a team to solve a problem. He argues, as we did in this chapter, for a more productive team.
14. A Few Good Men from UNIVAC, by David E. Lundstrom, talks about the concept of a focused and productive team. This book is about the origin of supercomputers.
15. On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules, by D.L. Parnas, is a 1972 landmark paper on how to go from a problem statement to a design. The fancy name for this process is called decomposition. The current fancy terms for thinking about design are "design patterns" or "factory objects.," However, be careful with these recent concepts; they refer to good high-level solution templates, but those templates must be applied with care and experience.
16. The concept of design directions came from Harlan Mills and Niklaus Wirth at IBM in the 1970s. Their original idea was to use a "top-down" approach, but all variants have been popular at various times. The authors believe that an "ends-in," approach is the best for the class of problems encountered in verification.
17. The Teal User's Manual, available at www.trusster.com, describes Teal in far more depth than this chapter does.
18. The sections "A Complex Solution" and "Accidental Complexity vs. Implementation Complexity" are drawn from the landmark paper, "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering," by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
19. The concept of team productivity and its variability is well documented in Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd edition, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister.
20. Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development, by Jim Coplien and Neil Harrison, is a good analysis of several years of software projects.
21. Lean Software Development, by Mary and Tom Poppendieck, looks at how proven "agile," manufacturing techniques can be applied to software development.
22. On the topic of connections between levels of abstraction and within a level of abstraction, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, by Roger S. Pressman, has several pertinent sections. (The fancy term for these connections is "cohesion and coupling.,")
23. Regarding premature optimization, the original quote is from Tony Hoare: "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.," This was quoted in Donald E. Knuth, Literate Programming (Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1992), 276. A web search can provide further references.
24. There is a plethora of books devoted to coding in C++. While many people have their favorites, a few of these books are universally popular. One book that does stand out is Effective C++: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Design (2nd edition), by Scott Meyers. However, you might want to wait until you have a few years of C++ experience before using this.