Design Verification tools and Resources ?

[KaRtiK]

I was wondering as to are there any good resources online /and or some
tools
to learn about formal design verification of large complex designs
like for instance a processor.

Also a good paper reading list in the same field would be great as
there are a tons of papers in this field on the ACM portal and I have
no clue where to start from.

Thanks

---------------------------------
Kartik Krishnan
kkrishnan[at]wisc.edu
www.cae.wisc.edu/~kartik
---------------------------------

 

[Thomas Stanka]

Hi,

kkrishnan@wisc.edu (KaRtiK) wrote:

I was wondering as to are there any good resources online /and or some
tools
to learn about formal design verification of large complex designs
like for instance a processor.

Formal Verification is usually divided in two subtopics:
- structural equivalence checking
- model/property checking

Structural equivalence is easy done, but gives you no idea wheter you
hit your specification. However it's very important to ensure your
netlist is still in spec, if your rtl code was in spec. Especially
after doing "handinsertions" or using selfmade tools on the netlist.

Comercial tools for structural equivalence are
- LEC from Verplex
- Echeck from Prover
- Formality from Synopsy
- FormalPro from Mentor

Model checking techniques are very difficult for complex processors
but would give you a safety you hit your spec (or miss zhe spec *g*).
There are also commercial tools available, AFAIK is none of the tools
able do do complex designs nowadays.

bye Thomas

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