From: [ Jim Hogan of Vista Ventures LLC ]
Subject: 16 Formal Apps that make Formal easy for us non-Formal engineers
Hi, John
While standard F-ABV tools can solve a lot of verification problems for a verification engineer well versed in Formal — there’s a set of tools called “Formal Apps” that does design-specific assertion writing for you; and then it automatically runs these assertions in your Formal tool of choice for you. It’s prepackaged Formal for the non-Formal user.
This approach both saves engineering man-hours plus it ups the quality of the assertions used to verify your chip. (Remember assertions have a Garbage In, Garbage Out sensitivity. If you try to verify your design with bad assertions, your verification fails.)
Here’s the 16 major categories of Formal Apps sold on the market today: