Sequential equivalence checking of hard instances with targeted inductive invariants and efficient filtering strategies

Abstract

We propose two approaches to significantly boost the power of sequential equivalence checking: (1) In contrast with invariants involving only two or three signals, we introduce a novel multisignal invariant generation technique that is scalable to large circuits; (2) We utilize static and dynamic filters to reduce the number of potential inductive invariants that need to be proved to further reduce the computational cost. Experimental results show that the proposed method can handle hard SEC instances with little or no internal equivalences that conventional methods fail; in addition, one to three orders of magnitude speedup have been achieved for many instances.