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Testing the NEORV32 with VUnit

VUnit is a powerful open-source unit testing framework for VHDL/SystemVerilog. It allows continuous and automated testing of HDL code by complementing traditional testing methodologies. The motto of VUnit is "testing early and often" through automation.

VUnit is composed by a http://vunit.github.io/py/ui.html[Python interface] and multiple optional http://vunit.github.io/vhdl_libraries.html[VHDL libraries]. The Python interface allows declaring sources and simulation options, and it handles the compilation, execution and gathering of the results regardless of the simulator used. That allows having a single run.py script to be used with any simulator.

On the other hand, VUnit's VHDL libraries provide utilities for assertions, logging, having virtual queues, handling CSV files, etc. The Verification Component Library uses those features for abstracting away bit-toggling when verifying standard interfaces such as Wishbone, AXI, Avalon, UARTs, etc.

Testbench sources in sim (such as sim/neorv32_vunit_tb.vhd and sim/uart_rx*.vhd) use VUnit's VHDL libraries for testing NEORV32 and peripherals. The entry-point for executing the tests is sim/run.py.

# ./sim/run.py -l
neorv32.neorv32_vunit_tb.all
Listed 1 tests

# ./sim/run.py -v
Compiling into neorv32:   rtl/core/neorv32_uart.vhd   passed
Compiling into neorv32:   rtl/core/neorv32_twi.vhd    passed
Compiling into neorv32:   rtl/core/neorv32_trng.vhd   passed
...