Design verification and reachability analysis using algebraic manipulation

Abstract

Design verification is the process of checking that the specification of a circuit satisfies certain correctness properties. Approaches to design verification have involved the use of temporal logic and model checking, as well as the use of higher-order logic and theorem proving. Current approaches suffer from either limited expressivity of the logic, the state explosion problem, or difficulty in automating the verification process. The primary source of the complexity explosion in automata theoretic or temporal logic approaches is the state space explosion due to the need to construct the state space of the system under analysis. Symbolic analysis techniques are used based on linear algebra, specifically matrix multiplication, to compactly represent the state space of circuits described by a behavioral or register-transfer-level specification and thereby avoid this state space explosion, for classes of circuits.<>