An Overview on Formal Techniques for Understanding Digital Hardware Designs

Abstract

Today’s complex digital hardware systems are developed by large distributed teams of engineers often spread over multiple companies. Reuse of existing Intellectual Property (IP) cores and software libraries as well as the integration of various technologies makes it impossible for a single person to know all the details of the actual implementation. Often documentation is outdated or not even available. However, when activating (sub-)systems, debugging certain functionality, or including new team members, a detailed understanding is mandatory to converge to a reliable embedded device. Automation for design understanding provides tool support for understanding the functionality of unknown systems or functional units. This overview reviews the state-of-the-art in formal techniques usable or targeted to support design understanding.