The Design of A Formal Property-Specification Language

September 3, 2004
Moshe Y. Vardi | Rice University

In recent years, the need for formal specification languages is growing rapidly as the functional validation environment in semiconductor design is changing to include more and more validation engines based on formal verification technologies. In particular, the usage of Formal Equivalence Verification and Formal Property Verification is growing, new symbolic simulation engines are introduced and hybrid environments of scalar and symbolic simulators are developed. To facilitate the use of these new-generation validation engines – properties, checkers and reference models need to be developed in a formal language.

In this talk we describe the design of the ForSpec Temporal Logic (FTL), the new temporal logic of ForSpec, Intel’s new formal property-specification language, which is today part of Synopsis OpenVera hardware verification language (www.open-vera.com). The key features of FTL are: it is a linear temporal logic, based on Pnueli’s LTL, it enables the user to define temporal connectives over time windows, it enables the user to define regular events, which are regular sequences of Boolean events, and then relate such events via special connectives, and it contains constructs that enable the user to model multiple clock and reset signals, which is useful in the verification of globally asynchronous and locally synchronous hardware designs.

The focus of the talk is on design rationale, ratherthan a detailed language description.

Speaker Details

Moshe Y. Vardi is the George Professor in Computational Engineering and Director of the Computer and Information Technology Institute at Rice University. He chaired the Computer Science Department at Rice University from January 1994 till June 2002. Prior to joining Rice in 1993, he was at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where he managed the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department. His research interests include database systems, computational-complexity theory, multi-agent systems, and design specification and verification. Vardi received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981. He is the author and co-author of over 250 technical papers, as well as a book titled “Reasoning about Knowledge”. Vardi is the recipient of three IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards and a co-winner of the 2000 Goedel Prize. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Saarland, Germany, and the University of Orleans, France. Vardi is an editor of several international journals and the president of the International Federation of Computational Logicians. He is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He was designated Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information, and was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the European Academy of Sciences.