Chapter 3 – Top Block

In a normalproject, the development of the DUT is done separately from the development ofthe testbench, so there are two components that connects both of them:

• The top block of the testbench

• A virtual interface

The top blockwill create instances of the DUT and of the testbench and the virtual interfacewill act as a bridge between them.

The interface isa module that holds all the signals of the DUT. The monitor, the driver and theDUT are all going to be connected to this module.

The code for theinterface can be seen in Code 3.1.

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interface simpleadder_if;      logic    sig_clock;      logic    sig_ina;      logic    sig_inb;      logic    sig_en_i;      logic    sig_out;      logic    sig_en_o; endinterface: simpleadder_if

Code 3.1: Interfacemodule – simpleadder_if.sv

After we have aninterface, we will need the top block. This block will be a normalSystemVerilog module and it will be responsible for:

• Connecting the DUT to the test class, using the interface defined before.

• Generating the clock for the DUT.

• Registering the interface in the UVM factory. This is necessary in order to pass this interface to all other classes that will be instantiated in the testbench. It will be registered in the UVM factory by using the uvm_resource_db method and every block that will use the same interface, will need to get it by calling the same method. It might start to look complex, but for now we won’t need to worry about it too much.

• Running the test.

The source forthe top block is represented in Code 3.2.

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`include"simpleadder_pkg.sv" `include"simpleadder.v" `include"simpleadder_if.sv"   module simpleadder_tb_top;      import uvm_pkg::*;        //Interface declaration      simpleadder_if vif();        //Connects the Interface to the DUT      simpleadder dut(vif.sig_clock,                      vif.sig_en_i,                      vif.sig_ina,                      vif.sig_inb,                      vif.sig_en_o,                      vif.sig_out);      initialbegin           //Registers the Interface in the configuration block           //so that other blocks can use it           uvm_resource_db#(virtual simpleadder_if)::set(.scope("ifs"), .name("simpleadder_if"), .val(vif));             //Executes the test           run_test();      end        //Variable initialization      initialbegin           vif.sig_clock =1'b1;      end        //Clock generation      always           #5 vif.sig_clock =~vif.sig_clock;      endmodule

Code 3.2: Top block– simepladder_tb_top.sv

A briefexplanation of the code will follow:

• The lines 2 and 3 include the DUT and the interface into the top block, the line 5 imports the UVM library, lines 11 to 16 connect the interface signals to the DUT.

• Line 21 registers the interface in the factory database with the name simpleadder_if.

• Line 24 runs one of the test classes defined at compilation runtime. This name is specified in the Makefile.

• Line 34 generates the clock with a period of 10 timeunits. The timeunit is also defined in the Makefile.

For moreinformation about interfaces, you can consult the book “SystemVerilog for Verification: A Guide to Learningthe TestBench Language Features“, chapter 5.3.

The files can befound here:

• simpleadder_if.sv
• simpleadder_tb_top.sv