In 1997, American chip consortium SEMATECH sounded an alarm to the industry about the chip design productivity gap. They observed that integrated chip manufacturing capabilities were expanding at about 40% a year. At the time. 

Yet IC design capabilities were only growing at about half of that rate. Thus, a potential crisis was brewing where design capabilities lag far behind manufacturing. 

This crisis never took place for reasons we will discuss later. In turn, however, a new challenge for the industry has emerged: Verification. 

Here, we are going to look at why this previously unheralded step has become a rather big deal in today's competitive chip design world.