Computer system for generating an integrated and unified view of IP-cores for hierarchical analysis of a system on chip (SoC) design

A computer system for hierarchical verification of a system-on-chip (SoC) having one or more intellectual property (IP) cores, the computer system comprising:

• a first input that provides an RTL implementation of SoC, including an RTL description of each IP core in the SoC;
• a second input that provides, for each IP core in the SoC, block level constraints that include block level input assumptions and block level output assumptions for the verification type of each IP core;
• and
• an abstraction generator that generates a plurality of verification specific abstracted views of each IP core, each said plurality of verification specific abstracted views having a plurality of verification specific attributes at an input/output (I/O) interface of each said abstracted view of each IP-core,
• wherein the abstraction generator further generates a unified abstracted view of the SoC, wherein the unified abstracted view of the SoC is generated using a process comprising:
• tagging each of said plurality of verification specific attributes in each of the IP cores of the SoC with a tag that is verification specific, to enable identification of each said attribute with corresponding said verification specific abstracted view and said verification type;
• comparing each of said plurality of attributes from said plurality of verification specific abstracted views;
• generating from said comparing a first output set containing groups of redundant attributes that have at least two similar attributes with different tags,
• generating from said comparing a second output set containing a group of unique attributes, each with a single verification specific tag;
• selecting one tagged attribute as a retained attribute from each of the redundant group of attributes and attaching all tags from the redundant group of attributes to the retained attribute;
• deleting all unselected attributes;
• combining said first output set with said group of unique retained attributes with multiple tags with said second set with said group of unique attributes with single tags thereby creating a unified group of attributes for each IP core in the SoC;
• integrating said combined unified groups of attributes from each of the IP-cores to form a unified abstracted view of the SoC, wherein abstracted views of upper level IP cores containing one or more lower level IP cores in a hierarchy of the SoC are formed by the abstraction generator using attributes for the lower level IP cores as inputs.