Formal Verification Of Floating Point Hardware Design

This is the first book to focus on the problem of ensuring the correctness of floating-point hardware designs through mathematical methods. Formal Verification of Floating-Point Hardware Design, Second Edition advances a verification methodology based on a unified theory of register-transfer logic and floating-point arithmetic that has been developed and applied to the formal verification of commercial floating-point units over the course of more than two decades, during which the author was employed by several major microprocessor design companies. The theory is extended to the analysis of several algorithms and optimization techniques that are commonly used in commercial implementations of elementary arithmetic operations. As a basis for the formal verification of such implementations, high-level specifications of the basic arithmetic instructions of several major industry-standard floating-point architectures are presented, including all details pertaining to the handling of exceptional conditions. The methodology is illustrated in the comprehensive verification of a variety of state-of-the-art commercial floating-point designs developed by Arm Holdings. This revised edition reflects the evolving microarchitectures and increasing sophistication of Arm processors, and the variation in the design goals of execution speed, hardware area requirements, and power consumption. Many new results have been added to Parts I-III (Register-Transfer Logic, Floating-Point Arithmetic, and Implementation of Elementary Operations), extending the theory and describing new techniques. These were derived as required in the verification of the new RTL designs described in Part V.

This is the first book to focus on the problem of ensuring the correctness of floating-point hardware designs through mathematical methods. Formal Verification of Floating-Point Hardware Design advances a verification methodology based on a unified theory of register-transfer logic and floating-point arithmetic that has been developed and applied to the formal verification of commercial floating-point units over the course of more than two decades, during which the author was employed by several major microprocessor design companies. The book consists of five parts, the first two of which present a rigorous exposition of the general theory based on the first principles of arithmetic. Part I covers bit vectors and the bit manipulation primitives, integer and fixed-point encodings, and bit-wise logical operations. Part II addresses the properties of floating-point numbers, the formats in which they are encoded as bit vectors, and the various modes of floating-point rounding. In Part III, the theory is extended to the analysis of several algorithms and optimization techniques that are commonly used in commercial implementations of elementary arithmetic operations. As a basis for the formal verification of such implementations, Part IV contains high-level specifications of correctness of the basic arithmetic instructions of several major industry-standard floating-point architectures, including all details pertaining to the handling of exceptional conditions. Part V illustrates the methodology, applying the preceding theory to the comprehensive verification of a state-of-the-art commercial floating-point unit. All of these results have been formalized in the logic of the ACL2 theorem prover and mechanically checked to ensure their correctness. They are presented here, however, in simple conventional mathematical notation. The book presupposes no familiarity with ACL2, logic design, or any mathematics beyond basic high school algebra. It will be of interest to verification engineers as well as arithmetic circuit designers who appreciate the value of a rigorous approach to their art, and is suitable as a graduate text in computer arithmetic. .

This is the first book to focus on the problem of ensuring the correctness of floating-point hardware designs through mathematical methods. Formal Verification of Floating-Point Hardware Design advances a verification methodology based on a unified theory of register-transfer logic and floating-point arithmetic that has been developed and applied to the formal verification of commercial floating-point units over the course of more than two decades, during which the author was employed by several major microprocessor design companies. The book consists of five parts, the first two of which present a rigorous exposition of the general theory based on the first principles of arithmetic. Part I covers bit vectors and the bit manipulation primitives, integer and fixed-point encodings, and bit-wise logical operations. Part II addresses the properties of floating-point numbers, the formats in which they are encoded as bit vectors, and the various modes of floating-point rounding. In Part III, the theory is extended to the analysis of several algorithms and optimization techniques that are commonly used in commercial implementations of elementary arithmetic operations. As a basis for the formal verification of such implementations, Part IV contains high-level specifications of correctness of the basic arithmetic instructions of several major industry-standard floating-point architectures, including all details pertaining to the handling of exceptional conditions. Part V illustrates the methodology, applying the preceding theory to the comprehensive verification of a state-of-the-art commercial floating-point unit. All of these results have been formalized in the logic of the ACL2 theorem prover and mechanically checked to ensure their correctness. They are presented here, however, in simple conventional mathematical notation. The book presupposes no familiarity with ACL2, logic design, or any mathematics beyond basic high school algebra. It will be of interest to verification engineers as well as arithmetic circuit designers who appreciate the value of a rigorous approach to their art, and is suitable as a graduate text in computer arithmetic.

This book presents 8 papers accompanying the lectures of leading researchers given at the 6th edition of the International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication and Software Systems (SFM 2006). SFM 2006 was devoted to formal techniques for hardware verification and covers several aspects of the hardware design process, including hardware design languages and simulation, property specification formalisms, automatic test pattern generation, symbolic trajectory evaluation, and more.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th IFIP WG 10.5 Advanced Research Working Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods, CHARME 2003, held in L'Aquila, Italy in October 2003. The 24 revised full papers and 8 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on software verification, automata based methods, processor verification, specification methods, theorem proving, bounded model checking, and model checking and applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods, ICFEM 2003, held in Singapore in November 2003. The 34 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on testing and validation, state diagrams, PVS/HOL, refinement, hybrid systems, Z/Object-Z, Petri nets, timed automata, system modelling and checking, and semantics and synthesis.

This volume contains the proceedings of CHARME 2001, the Eleventh Advanced Research Working Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Veri?cation Methods. CHARME 2001 is the 11th in a series of working conferences devoted to the development and use of leading-edge formal techniques and tools for the design and veri?cation of hardware and hardware-like systems. Previous events in the ‘CHARME’ series were held in Bad Herrenalb (1999), Montreal (1997), Frankfurt (1995), Arles (1993), and Torino (1991). This series of meetings has been organized in cooperation with IFIP WG 10.5 and WG 10.2. Prior meetings, stretching backto the earliest days of formal hardware veri?cation, were held under various names in Miami (1990), Leuven (1989), Glasgow (1988), Grenoble (1986), Edinburgh (1985), and Darmstadt (1984). The convention is now well-established whereby the European CHARME conference alternates with its biennial counterpart, the International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD), which is held on even-numbered years in the USA. The conference tookplace during 4–7 September 2001 at the Institute for System Level Integration in Livingston, Scotland. It was co-hosted by the - stitute and the Department of Computing Science of Glasgow University and co-sponsored by the IFIP TC10/WG10.5 Working Group on Design and En- neering of Electronic Systems. CHARME 2001 also included a scienti?c session and social program held jointly with the 14th International Conference on Th- rem Proving in Higher Order Logics (TPHOLs), which was co-located in nearby Edinburgh.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 23st International Symposium on VLSI Design and Test, VDAT 2019, held in Indore, India, in July 2019. The 63 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 199 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: analog and mixed signal design; computing architecture and security; hardware design and optimization; low power VLSI and memory design; device modelling; and hardware implementation.