Open Verification Methodology
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit-india OVM Jobs
Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren’t doing that thing you do 9-5?
“bullshit jobs.” It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.
I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. (UVM?) Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that anyone really does. I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.
The Open Verification Methodology (OVM) is a documented methodology with a supporting building-block library for the verification of semiconductor chip designs. The initial version, OVM 1.0, was released in January, 2008,[1] and regular updates have expanded its functionality. The latest version is OVM 2.1.2, released in January, 2011.
The reuse concepts within the OVM were derived mainly from the URM (Universal Reuse Methodology) which was, to a large part, based on the eRM (e Reuse Methodology) for the e Verification Language developed by Verisity Design in 2001. The OVM also brings in concepts from the Advanced Verification Methodology (AVM). The UVM class library brings much automation to the SystemVerilog language such as sequences and data automation features (packing, copy, compare) etc. The UVM also has recommendations for code packaging and naming conventions.