Verification Technology Inc. (Vtech)
Visualizing LSI Risks

Over the years, it has become increasingly important to ensure that large-scale integration (LSI) complies with functional safety standards, especially when embedded in products that can endanger people’s lives, such as automobiles. With consistent improvement in processing accuracy and capacity, it is important for manufacturers to maintain safety in the entire automobile development and fabrication process. That’s where Verification Technology Inc. (Vtech) can help. “With us, clients can achieve the shortest and highest quality LSI development compliant with functional safety standards,” says Mr. Hideto Takeuchi, the CEO and Founder of Verification Technology Inc. (Vtech).

Originally founded in Japan in 2003, Vtech traces the safety bottleneck in the entire LSI circuit in an established manner. The company’s functional safety process follows three key processes—analysis, design, and verification. The “analysis” process is the first to be performed when developing a functional safety LSI. It helps visualize LSI risks in response to enduser functional safety requirements. In the second process, design, Vtech creates the LSI development requirement specifications corresponding to the end user’s functional safety requirements and standards.

Lastly, the function is verified for the designed RTL based on the LSI development requirement specifications in the verification process.

The failure detection rate is also calculated for the gate circuit. While other design companies specialize in application, Vtech sets itself apart by quantitatively and numerically differentiating itself in the verification process. “By visualizing the risks for all the developers, it is possible to provide the LSIs requested by end users at low cost and with high quality. We also help our customers create assets for functional safety development,” mentions Mr. Takeuchi.

To this end, Vtech offers consulting services to obtain functional safety certification or help clients build the foundation to comply with functional safety standards in the LSI development process. “As all documents that are created based on the functional safety standards require traceability, we propose clients as simple and minimum development process as possible and create sample documents so that eventually the clients can obtain the certification without Vtech’s support,” states Mr. Takeuchi. Further, in terms of RTL design and verification, Vtech supports clients with the calculation of the fault coverage rate using fault simulator of Synopsys or Cadence, which are becoming standard tools in the FMEA process, and even introduction of those tools.

Vtech has been successful in assisting many prestigious clients in attaining their desired outcomes. For instance, a company realized that when it comes to Advanced Driver-Assistance System, highly accurate detection and recognition were important for LiDAR as well as improvement of the distance measuring performance. In addition, safety, reliability, downsizing, and cost reduction were also significant factors. Vtech not only proposed a safety mechanism to the client but also circuit downsizing, which resulted in the reduction of power consumption up to 30 percent. In another case, the company’s engineers helped a client process its project without delay and release the product much earlier than their competitors.

The company has worked on several other projects that reflect the prowess that it has garnered over the years by visualizing the clients’ risks. “I believe that our clients accept Vtech’s culture of continuously aiming to create new markets, where clients have difficulties with the technologies that they cannot acquire. Especially executives are impressed by how we always try to work on innovative and challenging themes,” concludes Mr. Takeuchi