A Verification Technique for Hardware Designs

Abstract

Most existing hardware design verification techniques (logic simulation, symbolic simulation etc.), as well as the design phase, are rather synthetic. This paper discusses an analytic verification technique with examples of its application. This technique employs backward symbolic simuation, or causality tracing, which is carried out from the negation of a proposition which should be verified. Analyticity this technique has, not only makes verification powerful but gives it another feature, design error diagnosis.