It’s one of those things that I sort of assumed had been done a long time ago: using databases for design information. After all, Magma’s initial claim to fame was the single database for a design, with different tools merely acting as different views into that single database.

Well, it turns out that that only applies to the design itself, along with the tools that allow you to do design. It hasn’t applied to verification.

But now it does: Cadence has recently announced their Incisive vManager tool. It’s a client-server implementation of a process that used to be handled on a file basis. And the reason this wasn’t solved by the whole design database thing of years ago is that this database doesn’t store the design: It stores all of the elements of the verification process itself.

What does this allow? Well, for good or ill, it allows many more ways to access the information or run analysis on the results. Different applications can be layered over it so that a manager can track progress while a verification engineer dives in to figure out where critical failures are.

The main goal is productivity. And, given the prevalence of databases for absolutely everything these days, you’d think this would be obvious. But it wasn’t obvious years ago, and EDA tools are complex enough to where legacy gets passed down as long as possible, until the pain gets to the point where a major change is needed.

Cadence decided that point is now. You can check out more in their release.