Valeria Bertacco - Böcker

The book overviews current formal verification methods and provides an in-depth analysis of some advanced techniques to improve the scalability of these methods and to close the gap between design and verification in computer-aided design. It provides the theoretical background required to present such methods and advanced techniques, i.e. Boolean function representations, models of sequential networks and, in particular, some novel algorithms to expose the disjoint support decompositions of Boolean functions, used in one of the scalable approaches.

Functional Design Errors in Digital Circuits Diagnosis covers a wide spectrum of innovative methods to automate the debugging process throughout the design flow: from Register-Transfer Level (RTL) all the way to the silicon die. (2) an RTL error diagnosis method that identifies the root cause of errors directly;

Scalable Hardware Verification with Symbolic Simulation presents recent advancements in symbolic simulation-based solutions which radically improve scalability. It overviews current verification techniques, both based on logic simulation and formal verification methods, and unveils the inner workings of symbolic simulation. The core of this book focuses on new techniques that narrow the performance gap between the complexity of digital systems and the limited ability to verify them. In particular, it covers a range of solutions that exploit approximation and parametrization methods, including quasi-symbolic simulation, cycle-based symbolic simulation, and parameterizations based on disjoint-support decompositions.In structuring this book, the author’s hope was to provide interesting reading for a broad range of design automation readers. The first two chapters provide an overview of digital systems design and, in particular, verification. Chapter 3 reviews mainstream symbolic techniques in formal verification, dedicating most of its focus to symbolic simulation. The fourth chapter covers the necessary principles of parametric forms and disjoint-support decompositions. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on recent symbolic simulation techniques, and the final chapter addresses key topics needing further research.Scalable Hardware Verification with Symbolic Simulation is for verification engineers and researchers in the design automation field.Highlights:A discussion of the leading hardware verification techniques, including simulation and formal verification solutionsImportant concepts related to the underlying models and algorithms employed in the fieldThe latest innovations in the area of symbolic simulation, exploiting techniques such as parametric forms and decomposition properties of BooleanfunctionsProviding insights into possible new developments in the hardware verification

The purpose of this book is to survey the state of the art and evolving directions in post-silicon and runtime verification. The authors start by giving an overview of the state of the art in verification, particularly current post-silicon methodologies in use in the industry, both for the domain of processor pipeline design and for memory subsystems. They then dive into the presentation of several new post-silicon verification solutions aimed at boosting the verification coverage of modern processors, dedicating several chapters to this topic. The presentation of runtime verification solutions follows a similar approach. This is an area of processor design that is still in its early stages of exploration and that holds the promise of accomplishing the ultimate goal of achieving complete correctness guarantees for microprocessor-based computation. The authors conclude the book with a look towards the future of late-stage verification and its growing role in the processor life-cycle.

The purpose of this book is to survey the state of the art and evolving directions in post-silicon and runtime verification. The authors start by giving an overview of the state of the art in verification, particularly current post-silicon methodologies in use in the industry, both for the domain of processor pipeline design and for memory subsystems. They then dive into the presentation of several new post-silicon verification solutions aimed at boosting the verification coverage of modern processors, dedicating several chapters to this topic. The presentation of runtime verification solutions follows a similar approach. This is an area of processor design that is still in its early stages of exploration and that holds the promise of accomplishing the ultimate goal of achieving complete correctness guarantees for microprocessor-based computation. The authors conclude the book with a look towards the future of late-stage verification and its growing role in the processor life-cycle.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2013, held in Haifa, Israel in November 2013. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on SAT and SMT-based verification, software testing, supporting dynamic verification, specification and coverage, abstraction and model presentation.