Eliminating Higher-Order Quantifiers to Obtain Decision Procedures for Hardware Verification

. In this paper, we present methods for eliminating higher-order quantifiers in proof goals arising in the verification of digital circuits. For the description of the circuits, a subset of higher-order logic called hardware formulae is used which is sufficient for describing hardware specifications and implementations at register transfer level. Real circuits can be dealt with as well as abstract (generic) circuits. In case of real circuits, it is formally proved, that the presented transformations result in decidable formulae, such that full automation is achieved for them. Verification goals of abstract circuits can be transformed by the presented methods into goals of logics weaker than higher-order logic, e.g. (temporal) propositional logic. The presented transformations are also capable of dealing with hierarchy and have been implemented in HOL90. 1 Introduction Higher-order logic is well suited for hardware verification [Gord86, Joyc91], but unfortunately this logic is neither ..