Oski Decoding Formal Club – A First-Timer’s Perspective

It’s undeniable: I am a newcomer to the formal verification scene. As one of the newest members of the Oski team, I didn’t know what to expect when I attended the Oski Decoding Formal Club meeting on October 11^th. Oski hosted the event at the acclaimed Parcel 104 Restaurant in the Santa Clara Marriott hotel. The ever popular event was sponsored by Synopsys, and provided attendees from semiconductor companies like Apple, Cavium, Cisco, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Western Digital and Xilinx with a great opportunity to network with other formal verification experts and engineers. Our taste buds were treated to a delectable meal made with locally harvested and sustained California ingredients, a Parcel 104 specialty, while Mandar Munishwar (Qualcomm), Ankit Saxena (Oski) and Vigyan Singhal (Oski) engaged our minds with presentations on intriguing formal topics.

Ankit Saxena (Oski) started off the series with a deep dive into “Verifying the Datapath for an AMD Processor”, which he worked on jointly with Sankar Gurumurthy (AMD), Farhan Rahman (AMD) and Ashutosh Prasad (Oski). Ankit’s talk described how data transform designs such as complex multipliers and dividers can be formally verified. View talk here.

Mandar Munishwar (Qualcomm) continued the discussion with his take on “Mutation and Proof Core: Two Sides of the Same Coin”. Mandar addressed the important topic of formal coverage so that users can determine the completeness of formal testbenches.

Vigyan Singhal (Oski) wrapped up the enlightening day with a talk on “Formal Verification for Networking Blocks”. Vigyan’s talk covered many examples of networking designs, and specific techniques that are useful to verify such designs supporting wide datapaths, large memories, large number of ports and linked lists. View Vigyan’s talk here.

I was amazed by how much the talks sparked everyone’s interest and prompted deep questions about the technology. The group’s enthusiasm for Chef Ogden’s talents was surpassed only by the hunger to learn more about the application of formal to real world problems. Great people, great food, great experience overall. I would highly recommend Decoding Formal Club to anyone in the semiconductor design community.

Oski and Synopsys wish to thank everyone that participated in making yet another Decoding Formal event a great success. To stay in the loop on upcoming Oski events, make sure you are included in our mailing list by emailing marketing@oskitech.com or visiting www.oskitechnology.com.

Tags: "Decoding Formal" Club, Decoding Formal, formal verification, Oski

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