Warning: The UVM "Early Adopter" (UVM-EA) release does not exist yet!
April 11, 2010
Some of you may have seen an announcement on Friday describing an early adopter kit of the UVM "based on the Accellera Verification IP Technical Subcommittee (VIP-TSC) decisions to date". Being a member of the Accellera VIP-TSC myself, I can assure you that the detailed technical contents of the purported "EA" release are still in flux. Anyone announcing such a release, even as a "kit" provided to allow users "to confidently start the process verifying your OVM products offerings in an UVM environment" is at best, misinformed about the current state of the UVM development effort and at worst endeavoring to hamper progress of the UVM.
Consider yourselves warned.
One other point worth mentioning is that, at present, the UVM will be based on the OVM 2.1.1 code base but will only be reasonably backward compatible[*] with the OVM 2.0.3. Of course, this is subject to change based on future committee votes. I wish I didn't have to say this, but anyone telling you otherwise is probably trying to sell you something...
For those of you who submitted responses to my register package survey, I've tabulated the results but am still working on anonymizing comments so I can share the details with Cool Verification readers and the VIP-TSC. Stay tuned!
[*] Updated since the original post - the UVM will not actually be directly backward compatible with any version of the OVM. Names of classes will be changed, some implementation details may be changed or deprecated, etc. Best to wait for official word from Accellera on what the first release of the library will look like.