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The Future of Formal: Academic, IC, EDA, and Software Perspectives

FMCAD, 2008. The Future of Formal: Academic, IC, EDA, and Software Perspectives. Ziyad Hanna VP of Research and Chief Architect Jasper Design Automation. Key FPV Market Observations.

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The Future of Formal: Academic, IC, EDA, and Software Perspectives

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  1. FMCAD, 2008 The Future of Formal: Academic, IC, EDA, and Software Perspectives Ziyad Hanna VP of Research and Chief Architect Jasper Design Automation

  2. Key FPV Market Observations • FPV is being shifted from supplementalto primaryverification method for a growing subset of verification tasks • Customers use formal property verification to displace a portion of their simulation usage • FPV revenues are growing much faster than revenues of other emerging EDA domain • Formal Technology – “The Swiss Army Knife” in Design and Validation

  3. EDAC 2007 Market Statistics

  4. FPV Applications Data Integrity PacketOrdering ROI • High-level requirements • End-to-end • Black box • Based on design intent Design Intent • RTL implementation assertions • Localized • Implementation-specific • White box RTL Implementation Increment By 1 FIFOOverflow One Hot FIFOOverflow Design Behavior

  5. Support Value differentiation Problem complexity and value # Users The cost of FPV • Low-end FPV solutions useful for debugging and easy problems however with limited ROI • FPV applicability is evolving rapidly, but is still gated by capacity limitations, and therefore needs more automation • Support and expertise is required to train initial users: • How to convert spec to properties • How to develop proper constraints • How to manage complexity

  6. Formal Verification Staged Adoption Model ROI Quality, Bugs, Coverage, Productivity Formal Verification Dynamic Verification Master Formal Technology Wide Deployment FV an established methodology in Design & Validation flows • Completeness • High coverage • Uncover hard bugs • Verify high level properties • Post Silicon Debug • High productivity 1st wow Adopt Early Drop Time Pilot FV Staffing, on risky blocks, Small team Corner stone In DV flow Cross blocks Multiple projects Customized Solutions based on FV technologies in Design and Validation Flows

  7. Main Challenges of FPV • Scalability and be able to run at same level of simulation and share setup • Usability: Push button flows are not scalable, on the other hand human in the loop is effective but is still costly • Predictability: “Is it going to work on this block?” • Perception of FPV ability • Interoperability with other methods (coverage etc.)

  8. The New Reality • Consumers are more selective, more discriminating about necessity and value • So too are companies, and the industry at large • Which will survive… and even thrive? • Employees • Projects • Business units • EDA suppliers • Companies Those with differentiated VALUE

  9. What is the Future of Formal ? • Well … we are not in the futurology science … • But so far Formal has been delivering an excellent value • FPV is relatively a young domain in the market and definitely has a great potential on targeted ROI • Still highly dependent on the future of: • HW/SW Design industry • EDA industry … • User Behavior • Adoption of new technologies and methodologies • And many other parameters

  10. Challenges and Opportunities Ahead … • Address cost and productivity issues in design and validation • Can we get 100% proofs on RTL models (at least for selected IP blocks), if not how to measure the coverage? What is the cost? • HLM for verification is unavoidable – need a new language with clear and precise semantics to drive HLS and formal at early stage in the the design cycle • Cross SW/HW verification is a huge challenge • Leverage the great progress in parallel and distributed computing

  11. Recommendations • Invest on targeted research to address real problems • Invest in RTL verification – it is NOT a solved problem yet (research still mostly at netlist) • Invest in dedicated HLM language and semantics for ESL, drive for an industrial standard • Better methodologies to leverage the power of formal • Think out-of-the-box for applying formal at several other bottlenecks in the design and validation flow • Deliver challenging and representative problems to Academia

  12. THANKS

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