Rolf Drechsler

Advanced Formal Verification Rolf Drechsler Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2004 edition

Marc Notes: Originally published: Boston, Mass.; London: Kluwer Academic, 2004.; The complexity in sheer transistor numbers in modern ICs has meant that classical simulation has become inadequate as a methodology for detecting flaws. This volume addresses formal verification in a number of industries, including the semiconductor industry, and shows how it can improve efficiency. Table of Contents: Preface. Contributing Authors. Introduction; R. Drechsler. 1. Formal Verification. 2. Challenges. 3. Contributions to this Book. 1: What SAT-Solvers Can and Cannot Do; E. Goldberg. 1. Introduction. 2. Hard Equivalence Checking CNF Formulas. 3. Stable Sets of Points. 2: Advancements in Mixed BDD and SAT Techniques; G. Cabodi, S. Quer. 1. Introduction. 2. Background. 3. Comparing SAT and BDD Approaches: Are they Different? 4. Decision Diagrams as a Slave Engine in General SAT: Clause Compression by Means of ZBDDs. 5. Decision Diagram Preprocessing and Circuit-Based SAT. 6. Using SAT in Symbolic Reachability Analysis. 7. Conclusion, Remarks and Future Works. 3: Equivalence Checking of Arithmetic Circuits; D. Stoffel, E. Karibaev, I. Kufareva, W. Kunz. 1. Introduction. 2. Verification Using Functional Properties. 3. Bit-Level Decision Diagrams. 4. Word-Level Decision Diagrams. 5. Arithmetic Bit-Level Verification. 6. Conclusion. 7. Future Perspectives. 4: Application of Property Checking; R. Brinkmann, P. Johannsen, K. Winkelmann. 1. Circuit Verification Environment: User's View. 2. Circuit Verification Environment: Underlying Techniques. 3. Exploiting Symmetries. 4. Automated Data Path Scaling to Speed Up Property Checking. 5. Property Checking Use Cases. 6. Summary. 5: Assertion-Based Verification; C. N. Coelho Jr, H. D. Foster. 1. Introduction. 2. Assertion Specification. 3. Assertion Libraries. 4. Assertion Simulation. 5. Assertions and Formal Verification. 6. Assertions and Synthesis. 7. PCI Property Specification Example. 8. Summary. 6: Formal Verification for Nonlinear Analog Systems; W. Hartong, R. Klausen, L. Hedrich. 1. Introduction. 2. System Description. 3. Equivalence Checking. 4. Model Checking. 5. Summary. 6. Acknowledgement. Appendix: Mathematical Symbols. Index. Publisher Marketing: Modern circuits may contain up to several hundred million transistors. In the meantime it has been observed that verification becomes the major bottleneck in design flows, i.e. up to 80% of the overall design costs are due to verification. This is one of the reasons why several methods have been proposed as alternatives to classical simulation. Simulation alone cannot guarantee sufficient coverage of the design resulting in bugs that may remain undetected. As alternatives formal verification techniques have been proposed. Instead of simulating a design the correctness is proven by formal techniques. There are different areas where these approaches can be used: equivalence checking, property checking or symbolic simulation. These methods have been successfully applied in many industrial projects and have become the state-of-the-art technique in several fields. However, the deployment of the existing tools in real-world projects also showed the weaknesses and problems of formal verification techniques. This gave motivating impulses for tool developers and researchers. Advanced Formal Verification shows the latest developments in the verification domain from the perspectives of the user and the developer. World leading experts describe the underlying methods of today's verification tools and describe various scenarios from industrial practice. In the first part of the book the core techniques of today's formal verification tools, such as SAT and BDDs are addressed. In addition, multipliers, which are known to be difficult, are studied. The second part gives insight in professional tools and the underlying methodology, such as property checking and assertion based verification. Finally, analog components have to be considered to cope with complete system on chip designs. In this book the state-of-the-art in many important fields of formal verification are described. Besides the description of the most recent research results, open problems and challenging research areas are addressed. Because of this, the book is intended for CAD developers and researchers in the verification domain, where formal techniques become a core technology to successful circuit and system design. Furthermore, the book is an excellent reference for users of verification tools in order to acquire a better understanding of the internal principles and subsequently drive the tools to the highest performance. In this context the book is dedicated to those in industry and academia to stay informed about the most recent developments in the field of formal verification.

Contributor Bio:  Drechsler, Rolf Prof. Rolf Drechsler has authored and edited numerous books for Springer