Model Abstraction for Formal Verification

As the complexity of circuit designs grows, designers look toward formal verification to achieve better test coverage for validating complex designs. However, this approach is inherently computationally intensive, and hence, only small designs can be verified using this method. To achieve better performance, model abstraction is necessary. Model abstraction reduces the number of states necessary to perform formal verification while maintaining the functionality of the original model with respect to the specifications to be verified. As a result, model abstraction enables large designs to be formally verified. In this paper, we describe three methods for model abstraction based on semantics extraction from user models to improve the performance of formal verification tools