You will explore the evolution of Verilog and how SystemVerilog has expanded on its capabilities. You will learn about the key differences between Verilog and SystemVerilog, including new data types, enhanced design flexibility, and advanced verification techniques. The course also covers how SystemVerilog introduces powerful tools for verification, such as assertions, randomization, and functional coverage, to simplify and improve the design process. You should be familiar with the extensions introduced by SystemVerilog, its added features for both designers and verification engineers, and how these tools can be integrated into your design flow.

Understand how to describe and apply both built-in and user-defined data types in SystemVerilog. Learn to utilize typedef and enum for custom data definitions and to effectively use structures and strings within designs. Gain familiarity with SystemVerilog packages to organize and encapsulate code, making reuse easier and avoiding conflicts through namespaces. Develop the ability to define and use constraint blocks, which add flexibility by allowing scope randomization. Recognize how these elements work together to enable more organized, modular, and efficient SystemVerilog code.

Describe and utilize the enhancements made to tasks and functions in SystemVerilog. This includes understanding the new optional begin…end block for better readability and flexibility in defining subroutines. The ability for functions to have output and inout arguments expands their usability, allowing for more complex data interactions. Furthermore, functions can now return the void data type, which provides the option to have functions that perform actions without needing to return a specific value. It is important to note that both tasks and functions can return early before reaching their completion, making code execution more efficient. Default parameter values simplify function calls by allowing for optional parameters, and binding arguments by name offers clarity in complex function calls. Additionally, being able to pass arguments by reference or by value provides versatility in how data is handled within tasks and functions. Mastering these enhancements will significantly improve the ability to create more effective and flexible designs in SystemVerilog.

Investigate the benefits and capabilities of SystemVerilog interfaces by understanding their role in simplifying design block communication. You will explore how interfaces allow multiple signals to be represented as a single port, reducing code verbosity and promoting code reuse. By learning the importance of generic and parameterized interfaces, you can raise the level of design abstraction, where all declarations are in a single location, making the design more readable and manageable. Interfaces also support encapsulation through tasks and functions, allowing you to define inter-module communication protocols within the interface. For example, you could implement a “Bus Read” task that executes inside the interface. Additionally, you will learn about modports, which allow different views of an interface, enabling the definition of distinct roles such as “master” and “slave” views for a bus with shared signals but differing port declarations and restricted capabilities.

Understand the fundamentals of SystemVerilog array types, including packed and unpacked arrays, and learn their different applications. Distinguish between static and dynamic arrays, identifying how dynamic arrays allow for flexible sizing. Learn how associative arrays store elements with unique keys, making data retrieval more efficient. Recognize the advantages of queues for dynamic data storage, and explore the various methods available for array and queue manipulation. Gain an understanding of locator methods and how they can simplify the process of finding and managing data within arrays.

Learn how to use SystemVerilog’s Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) features to create classes that enhance the flexibility and structure of test environments. Gain skills in defining properties and methods for data manipulation, and in using constructors to initialize objects during simulation. Understand the benefits of encapsulation to protect data, as well as inheritance and polymorphism to create reusable, layered data types. These features allow you to dynamically create and destroy objects, making your testbench more versatile and maintainable. Additionally, explore how static properties and methods enable shared data access across instances, enhancing test efficiency and code organization.

Learn to use randomization to control class properties, which enables generating complex and diverse test stimuli efficiently. Apply pre- and post-randomize methods to manage specific steps before and after randomization to produce tailored stimuli for different testing needs. Adjust constraints on properties to create valid and targeted data within defined boundaries. Switch easily between different constraint settings to control random generation based on test requirements. Understand how to set random seeds to reproduce results consistently, allowing repeatable testing scenarios. Through these skills, create more dynamic and comprehensive stimulus patterns that help cover corner cases and improve test coverage.

Learn to implement data-oriented functional coverage using SystemVerilog covergroups, which enables defining what variables and events to sample. Set up coverage bins that count specific values and transitions, either automatically or explicitly. Use scalar and vector bins to monitor individual or combined value coverage, and define ignore_bins and illegal_bins to focus on valid cases. Understand cross-product coverage, including automatic and user-defined cross bins, to analyze interactions between different coverpoints. Gain control over the behavior of covergroups, coverpoints, and cross coverage, and use SystemVerilog functions to start, stop, and monitor coverage, and manage results for targeted verification.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of SystemVerilog’s interprocess synchronization mechanisms, covering non-blocking events, event sequences, mailboxes, and semaphores in depth. Develop the ability to use non-blocking event triggers effectively to control execution flow without interrupting ongoing processes. Learn to utilize event variables and sequences to manage complex process interactions and coordinate timing accurately. Understand how mailboxes support synchronized data exchange, leveraging FIFO structures for orderly communication across processes. Further, explore the use of semaphores in managing access to shared resources, with blocking capabilities and request “weighting” mechanisms that help maintain controlled synchronization across multiple processes.