The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) announced the functional freeze of the Long Term Evolution specs (Release 8.) in Dec 2008 and the first commercial services are now available. While several first-generation implementations of both LTE base stations and baseband chips for handsets already exist, there is no doubt that these and other initial implementations will need to be optimized over time to improve cost/performance and upgraded to comply with the latest version of the specification. The design and development time for hardware, software and systems is painfully short. A comprehensive design and verification methodology is required to meet the tight development schedule while satisfying or exceeding performance criteria.