Fifth Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI'95)
Automated verification of temporal properties specified as state machines in VHDL
The State University of New York at Buffalo
March 16-March 18
ISBN: 0-8186-7035-5
Y.V. Hoskote, Comput. Eng. Res. Center, Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA
J.A. Abraham, Comput. Eng. Res. Center, Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA
D.S. Fussell, Comput. Eng. Res. Center, Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA
This paper presents a new verification methodology to prove that a high level HDL description of a synchronous sequential circuit satisfies certain desired behavior or that it is free of certain malicious behavior. The correctness specifications are modeled as state machines with some transitions having unspecified inputs. We show that this suffices for specification of a large class of properties, including both safety and liveness properties. The properties are described as VHDL programs to enable the designer to simulate them for sample inputs and gain some measure of confidence in their correctness. Experimental results are presented for the Viper microprocessor.
Index Terms:
hardware description languages; formal verification; high level synthesis; finite state machines; sequential circuits; microprocessor chips; formal specification; automated verification methodology; temporal properties; state machines; VHDL; synchronous sequential circuit; correctness specifications; liveness properties; Viper microprocessor; Mealy FSM; compatible states
Citation:
Y.V. Hoskote, J.A. Abraham, D.S. Fussell, "Automated verification of temporal properties specified as state machines in VHDL," glsvlsi, pp.100, Fifth Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI'95), 1995