Samsung, a market leader in solid-state drives (SSDs), decided to add a PCI Express interface to its SSD controllers in 2012 to increase data transfer performance and expand its market share. Traditionally, SSDs were based on the SATA protocol used for HDDs, which was compatible but had performance and throughput limitations when used with non-volatile memory. The addition of PCI Express to Samsung’s SSD significantly increased the challenges faced in device and software validation, particularly at the system-on-chip (SoC) level. This required a significant performance increase in the validation environment to validate PCI Express behavior at the SoC level, integrate and debug host driver software, and validate end-to-end bulk DMA transfers. Samsung initially attempted to use their traditional approach—a simulated testbench using simulation verification IP (VIP)—but found it too slow and inefficient for their needs with the PCI Express interface.