January 31st, 2019 – By: Tom Anderson
Formal apps can target specific verification problems at a full-chip level, even on very large designs.
Formal verification has traditionally been regarded as an advanced technique for experts to thoroughly verify individual blocks of logic, or perhaps small clusters of blocks. However, if you talk to anyone involved in the field these days, you’ll find that the majority of formal users are running applications (“apps”) targeted for specific verification problems. Further, many of these apps, notably connectivity checking, are being run at the full-chip level on very large designs. We’d like to use this month’s post to explore the links between these two extremes, looking at what has changed and what is likely to happen going forward.