Protocol Validation Turned from Night to Day

A well-known semiconductor company with a global presence needed to validate I2C compliance for their silicon chip design. Initially, they developed an in-house tool to fulfill this need, but it proved inadequate as it lacked robustness and did not cover all essential areas for comprehensive and effective validation. Consequently, they looked for a dependable and reliable tool that could not only conduct thorough validation but also cater to their specific requirements and go beyond in its capabilities.

 

Challenge

A well-known semiconductor company like this is not new to such validation processes and the tedious and endless hours put in to conduct effective validation. Spending time and developing an in-house tool to help in validation process may help in conducting a few sets of validation processes but even so often required refactoring. And on top of all developing such tools is not the primary job for a validation engineer. To even start validation, the company had to spend a minimum of 3 months to set up a validation bench and an expert engineer to develop a solution. For a company that researches and designs large numbers of new silicon chips often, this solution was not workable.

 

Solution

Even before the purchase of (PVS) Protocol Validation Solutions, Soliton shared an exceptional relationship with them through our values displayed in earlier service engagements. These proved to be a crucial factor that allowed them to entrust our I2C tool without even exploring other options.

    • Once after the successful delivery, setup and onboarding of customers, the compliance validation process underwent a significant transformation and proved to be phenomenally successful.
    • The time needed to set up a validation bench decreased drastically, reducing from more than 3 months to a matter of hours.
    • The capital investment needed for setting up such a system was minimized by up to 80% due to PVS’s added features such as creating specific Device Under Test (DUT) configurations, automated scripts and many more which the customers were surprised and appreciated deeply.
    • The seamless integration of PVS into the overall validation process played a key role in achieving these remarkable efficiency improvements.

Key values delivered

- 11/10 was the rating insisted on by the customers when asked about our customer support.

- Validation setup from more than 3 months to a matter of hours.

- Seamless onboarding experience.

Most valuable features of PVS

- Automation of Scripts, with minimal setup and configuration a complete validation could be run.

- Debug functionality which allowed them to remove all the unknowns out of the validation and conduct a sound validation process.

- Report generation which gave a clear report of the results and pass/fail conditions. Additionally, the ability to recreate a pass/fail condition from report.

Going beyond 

Customers had a specific requirement for oscilloscope custom plug-ins to integrate with the oscilloscopes they used. We successfully created tailored plug-ins that seamlessly integrated with our PVS tool, meeting their specific needs, and expanded the range of oscilloscopes supported.

11/10 was the customer support rating shared by the customer for going beyond their expectations on customer support. Such a feat could be achieved by the provision of well-defined documentation, guidelines, and reliable support which ensured a smooth onboarding experience for our customers without any obstacles.

In the customer’s own words “Validation turned from Night to Day after PVS” stands as a testimonial for the values brought and expectation exceeded by PVS.

Today with PVS Customers seamlessly integrate validation into their existing process without being worried about time and effort in this race to market era. Quoting the validation manager, “It was a wonderful experience with Soliton’s PVS I2C tool. It helped us save a lot of time in the validation process and money spent to develop”.

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