Difference between Simulink diagnostics and Simulink Design Verifier error checking?

Simulink Design Verifier can perform error checking to determine whether a model contains dead logic, division by zero, overflows, and other checks. However, Simulink diagnostics already performs these checks at simulation-time (see https://www.mathworks.com/help/simulink/gui/diagnostics-pane-data-validity.html). For example, the simple model below shows that during simulation there is a divide by zero error. What is the advantage of using the SDV toolbox instead of relying on the Simulink diagnostics?

Answer 1

[Paul Urban]

Simulink Design Verifier can detect these errors before simulation by using formal methods to analyze the model for errors such as integer overflow, division by zero, array out of bounds, subnormal values, and floating-point errors as well as data validity errors. A single simulation run may not encounter any error based on the value of the signals during the simulation. Design Verifier analyzes the model to find these errors without exhaustive simulation. Simulink Design Verifier generates a counter example for each error to reproduce it. Simulink Design Verifier can also detect dead logic which would not be executed by simulation.

[Monika Jaskolka]

Thanks Paul. Do Simulink Test and Model Advisor require SDV in order to check models for errors, or do they provide error checking functionality without SDV?

[Paul Urban]

There is no dependency between Simulink Test and Simulink Design Verifer. Simulink Test runs simulations to perform functional tests. Model Advisor comes with Simulink and includes base checks of the model. It provides the infrastructure for more advanced static analysis and guideline checks. Simulink Check enables customization of the Model Advisor checks for your own standards and includes high integrity checks for standards and guidelines like 26262 or DO-178. These checks examine the model for issues such as readability, complexity, clones, naming conventions, usage of blocks for production code, etc. Simulink Design Verifier performs more advanced checks using formal methods to detect design errors as mentioned previously. SLDV checks can be launched from Model Advisor along with the standards checks to peform all the static analysis from a single place and include them with the other standards checks. From a licensing perspective Simulink Design Verifier requires Simulink Check and Simulink Coverage. Simulink Coverage is needed by SLDV to perform the automatic test generation to generate test cases for complete structural coverage of the model.

[Monika Jaskolka]

Thank you for the comprehensive answer!