Formal sign-off is possible with today’s technology and methodology. But to get to formal sign-off takes an understanding of what is possible with formal verification, and an immersion in ongoing practice with formal methods and techniques. Moreover, early experiences with formal can determine later success with formal verification and sign-off. Even with a deep knowledge of a formal verification tool and extensive training from the tool vendor, exponential formal proof complexity often gets in the way of exhaustive coverage. Often what is needed is training in formal verification methodology and formal test planning that includes an exhaustive list of end-to-end checkers, as well as the mastering of formal techniques that help overcome complexity. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Pippa Slayton’
Achieving Formal Sign-off: Key Learnings for Trainees and Experts
Monday, May 2nd, 2016Recap of the 2016 Oski Formal Puzzler – “Chessboard Challenge” (+ Video)
Thursday, March 24th, 2016In December 2015, Oski challenged formal users to build the fastest testbench to solve our Oski Formal Puzzler – the Chessboard Challenge, Berkeley Math Circle Monthly Contest 8, 2011, proposed and designed by Evan O’Dorney, three-time Putnam Fellow. Jesse Bingham from Intel submitted the winning entry, as was announced during a presentation at the recent meeting of the Decoding Formal Club in Santa Clara, CA on February 29, 2016. This was an opportunity to promote the adoption of formal verification across the semiconductor industry, and share formal techniques by showing how they might be used to solve a fun formal puzzle. (more…)
Formal 2025: It’s Back to the Future!
Friday, November 13th, 2015The recent Decoding Formal Club meeting hosted by Oski Technology on October 21, 2015 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View celebrated the club’s 2nd anniversary with a “back to the future” twist.
While many of the predictions in the movie “Back to Future Part II” did not come true on October 21, 2015, the day of “the future” to which Marty McFly and Doc Brown time travel in a flying silver DeLorean sports car, that didn’t deter us from inviting attendees from Apple, ARM, Arteris, Broadcom, Ericsson, Google, Imagination, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Networks, Qualcomm and others to make some timely predictions for formal verification in 2025. The group was comprised of formal experts with years of experience, as well as engineers who are new to formal verification, so the predictions for 2025 were daring, but quite possible.
