Formal Verification

Book excerpt: Formal Verification: An Essential Toolkit for Modern VLSI Design, Second Edition presents practical approaches for design and validation, with hands-on advice to help working engineers integrate these techniques into their work. Formal Verification (FV) enables a designer to directly analyze and mathematically explore the quality or other aspects of a Register Transfer Level (RTL) design without using simulations. This can reduce time spent validating designs and more quickly reach a final design for manufacturing. Building on a basic knowledge of SystemVerilog, this book demystifies FV and presents the practical applications that are bringing it into mainstream design and validation processes. New sections cover advanced techniques, and a new chapter, The Road To Formal Signoff, emphasizes techniques used when replacing simulation work with Formal Verification. After reading this book, readers will be prepared to introduce FV in their organization to effectively deploy FV techniques that increase design and validation productivity.