An efficient equivalence checker for combinational circuits

Abstract

This paper describes a novel equivalence checking method for combinational circuits, which utilizes relations among internal signals represented by binary decision diagrams. To verify circuits efficiently, a proper set of internal signals that are independent with each other should be chosen. A heuristic based on analysis of circuit structure is proposed to select such a set of internal signals. The proposed verifier requires only a minute for equivalence checking of all the ISCAS'85 benchmarks on SUN-4/10.