Formal methods play a significant and increasing role in hardware verification, but their effectiveness can be impaired by the ac hoc nature of mainstream hardware languages such as VHDL, Verilog and SystemC, which have convoluted semantics that often necessitate contrived proof techniques. This dissertation investigates the application of formal reasoning to hardware architectures expressed in an alternative class of semantically elegant languages, which support efficient design, whilst also having been developed with proof techniques in mind. A network-on-chip architecture belonging to the SpiNNaker many-core processor is specified in Concurrent Haskell, and a hand proof is presented which verifies a novel routing mechanism by mathematical induction. A subset of Bluespec SystemVerilog (BSV) is embedded in the higher order logic of the PVS theorem prover. Owing to the clean semantics of BSV, application of monadic techniques leads to a surprisingly elegant embedding, in which hardware designs are translated into logic almost verbatim, preserving types and language constructs. Proof strategies are written in the PVS strategy language; these automatically verify temporal logic theorems concerning the resulting monadic expressions, by employing a combination of model checking and deductive reasoning. The subset of BSV which is embedded includes module definition and instantiation, methods, implicit conditions, scheduling attributes, and rule composition using methods from instantiated modules. The aforementioned subset of BSV is also embedded in the specification language of the SAL model checker, and a verification strategy is presented which combines the specialised model checking capabilities of SAL with the diverse proof strategies of PVS.

<p>In design verication, although simulation is still a widely used verication</p> <p>technique in FPGA design, formal verication is obtaining greater acceptance</p> <p>as the complexity of designs increases. In the simulation method, for a circuit</p> <p>with n inputs and m registers an exhaustive test vector will have as many as</p> <p>2^(m+n) elements making it impractical for many modern circuits. Therefore</p> <p>this method is incomplete, i.e., it may fail to catch some design errors due to</p> <p>the lack of complete test coverage. Formal verication can be introduced as a</p> <p>complement to traditional verication techniques.</p> <p>The primary objectives of this thesis are determining: (i) how to for-</p> <p>malize FPGA implementations at dierent levels of abstraction, and (ii) how</p> <p>to prove their functional correctness. This thesis explores two variations of a</p> <p>formal verication framework by proving the functional correctness of several</p> <p>FPGA implementations of commonly used safety subsystem components us-</p> <p>ing the theorem prover PVS. We formalize components at the netlist level and</p> <p>the Verilog Register Transfer HDL level, preserving their functional semantics.</p> <p>Based on these formal models, we prove correctness conditions for the com-</p> <p>ponents using PVS. Finally, we present some techniques which can facilitate</p> <p>the proving process and describe some general strategies which can be used to</p> <p>prove properties of a synchronous circuit design.</p> / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

The aim of this thesis is to explore the potential of resolution-based methods for linear temporal reasoning. On the abstract level, this means to develop new algorithms for automated reasoning about properties of systems which evolve in time. More concretely, we will: 1) show how to adapt the superposition framework to proving theorems in propositional Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), 2) use a connection between superposition and the CDCL calculus of modern SAT solvers to come up with an efficient LTL prover, 3) specialize the previous to reachability properties and discover a close connection to Property Directed Reachability (PDR), an algorithm recently developed for model checking of hardware circuits, 4) further improve PDR by providing a new technique for enhancing clause propagation phase of the algorithm, and 5) adapt PDR to automated planning by replacing the SAT solver inside with a planning-specific procedure. We implemented the proposed ideas and provide experimental results which demonstrate their practical potential on representative benchmark sets. Our system LS4 is shown to be the strongest LTL prover currently publicly available. The mentioned enhancement of PDR substantially improves the performance of our implementation of the algorithm for hardware model checking in the multi-property...

Les circuits microélectroniques récents intègrent des dizaines d'horloges afin d'optimiser leur consommation et leur performance. Le nombre de traversées de domaines d'horloges (CDC) et la complexité des systèmes augmentant, garantir formellement l'intégrité d'une donnée devient un défi majeur. Plusieurs problèmes sont alors soulevés : configurer le système dans un mode réaliste, décrire l'environnement par des hypothèses sur les protocoles, gérer l'explosion de l'espace des états, analyser les contre-exemples, ...La première contribution de cette thèse a pour but d'atteindre une configuration complète et réaliste du système. Nous utilisons de la vérification formelle paramétrique ainsi qu'une analyse de la structure du circuit afin de détecter automatiquement les composants des arbres d'horloge. La seconde contribution cherche à éviter l'explosion de l'espace des états en combinant des abstractions localisées du circuit avec une analyse de contre-examples. L'idée clé est d'utiliser la technologie de raffinement d'abstraction guidée par contre-exemple (CEGAR) où l'utilisateur influence la poursuite de l'algorithme en se basant sur des informations extraites des contre-exemples intermédiaires. La troisième contribution vise à créer des hypothèses pour des environnements sous-contraints. Tout d’abord, plusieurs contre-exemples sont générés pour une assertion, avec différentes raisons d’échec. Ensuite, des informations en sont extraites et transformées en hypothèses réalistes.Au final, cette thèse montre qu'une vérification formelle concluante peut être obtenue en combinant la rapidité de l'analyse structurelle avec l'exhaustivité des méthodes formelles. / Modern hardware designs typically comprise tens of clocks to optimize consumption and performance to the ongoing tasks. With the increasing number of clock-domain crossings as well as the huge complexity of modern SoCs, formally proving the functional integrity of data propagation became a major challenge. Several issues arise: setting up the design in a realistic mode, writing protocol assumptions modeling the environment, facing state-space explosion, analyzing counter-examples, ...The first contribution of this thesis aims at reaching a complete and realistic design setup. We use parametric liveness verification and a structural analysis of the design in order to identify behaviors of the clock and reset trees. The second contribution aims at avoiding state-space explosion, by combining localization abstractions of the design, and counter-example analysis. The key idea is to use counterexample-guided abstraction refinement as the algorithmic back-end, where the user influence the course of the algorithm based on relevant information extracted from intermediate abstract counterexamples. The third contribution aims at creating protocol assumptions for under-specified environments. First, multiple counter-examples are generated for an assertion, with different causes of failure. Then, information is mined from them and transformed into realistic protocol assumptions.Overall, this thesis shows that a conclusive formal verification can be obtained by combining inexpensive structural analysis along with exhaustive model checking.

Submitted by Viviane Lima da Cunha (viviane@biblioteca.ufpb.br) on 2016-02-16T14:54:49Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivovotal.pdf: 4473573 bytes, checksum: 152c2f0d263c50dcbea7d500d5f7f5da (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-16T14:54:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivovotal.pdf: 4473573 bytes, checksum: 152c2f0d263c50dcbea7d500d5f7f5da (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-17 / Este trabalho propõe um ambiente para verificação de sistemas embarcados heterogêneos através da cossimulação distribuída. A verificação ocorre de maneira síncrona entre o software do sistema e o sistema embarcado usando a High Level Architecture (HLA) como middeware. A novidade desta abordagem não é apenas fornecer suporte para simulações, mas também permitir a integração sincronizada com todos os dispositivos de hardware físico. Neste trabalho foi utilizado o Ptolemy como uma plataforma de simulação. A integração do HLA com Ptolemy e os modelos de hardware abre um vasto conjunto de aplicações, como o de teste de vários dispositivos ao mesmo tempo, executando os mesmos, ou diferentes aplicativos ou módulos, a execução de multiplos dispositivos embarcados para a melhoria de performance. Além disso a abordagem de utilização do HLA, permite que sejam interligados ao ambiente, qualquer tipo de robô, assim como qualquer outro simulador diferente do Ptolemy. Estudo de casos são apresentado para provar o conceito, mostrando a integração bem sucedida entre o Ptolemy e o HLA e a verificação de sistemas utilizando Hardware-in-the-loop e Robot-in-the-loop. / This work proposes an environment for verification of heterogeneous embedded systems through distributed co-simulation. The verification occurs in real-time co-simulating the system software and hardware platform using the High Level Architecture (HLA) as a middleware. The novelty of this approach is not only providing support for simulations, but also allowing the synchronous integration with any physical hardware devices. In this work we use the Ptolemy framework as a simulation platform. The integration of HLA with Ptolemy and the hardware models open a vast set of applications, like the test of many devices at the same time, running the same, or different applications or modules, the usage of Ptolemy for real-time control of embedded systems and the distributed execution of different embedded devices for performance improvement. Furthermore the use of HLA approach allows them to be connected to the environment, any type of robot, as well as any other Ptolemy simulations. Case studies are presented to prove the concept, showing the successful integration between Ptolemy and the HLA and verification systems using Hardware-in-the-loop and Robot-in-the-loop.