249 research outputs found
Enhanced Formal Verification Flow for Circuits Integrating Debugging and Coverage Analysis
In this paper we briefly review techniques used in formal hardware verification. An advanced flow emerges from integrating two major methodological improvements: debugging support and coverage analysis. The verification engineer can locate the source of a failure with an automatic debugging support. Components are identified which explain the discrepancy between the property and the circuit behavior.This method is complemented by an approach to analyze functional coverage of the proven Bounded Model Checking(BMC) properties. The approach automatically determines whether the property set is complete or not. In the latter case coverage gaps are returned. Both techniques are integrated in an enhanced verification flow. A running example demonstrates the resulting advantages
Synthesis and Optimization of Reversible Circuits - A Survey
Reversible logic circuits have been historically motivated by theoretical
research in low-power electronics as well as practical improvement of
bit-manipulation transforms in cryptography and computer graphics. Recently,
reversible circuits have attracted interest as components of quantum
algorithms, as well as in photonic and nano-computing technologies where some
switching devices offer no signal gain. Research in generating reversible logic
distinguishes between circuit synthesis, post-synthesis optimization, and
technology mapping. In this survey, we review algorithmic paradigms ---
search-based, cycle-based, transformation-based, and BDD-based --- as well as
specific algorithms for reversible synthesis, both exact and heuristic. We
conclude the survey by outlining key open challenges in synthesis of reversible
and quantum logic, as well as most common misconceptions.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figures, 2 table
Diagnose network failures via data-plane analysis
Diagnosing problems in networks is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Previous tools to assist operators primarily focus on analyzing control
plane configuration. Configuration analysis is limited in that it cannot find
bugs in router software, and is harder to generalize across protocols since it
must model complex configuration languages and dynamic protocol behavior.
This paper studies an alternate approach: diagnosing problems through
static analysis of the data plane. This approach can catch bugs that are
invisible at the level of configuration files, and simplifies unified analysis of a
network across many protocols and implementations. We present Anteater, a
tool for checking invariants in the data plane. Anteater translates high-level
network invariants into boolean satisfiability problems, checks them against
network state using a SAT solver, and reports counterexamples if violations
have been found. Applied to a large campus network, Anteater revealed 23
bugs, including forwarding loops and stale ACL rules, with only five false
positives. Nine of these faults are being fixed by campus network operators
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