Exploiting the Potential of Diagrams in Guiding Hardware Reasoning

Abstract

. . .Formal methods offer much more to computer science than just “proofs of correctness” for programs and digital circuits. Many of the problems in software and hardware design are due to imprecision, ambiguity, incompleteness, misunderstanding, and just plain mistakes in the statement of top-level requirements, in the description of intermediate designs, or in the specification of components and interfaces. Rushby [1993] . . .Desire for correctness proofs of systems spawned the research area known as “formal methods”. Today’s systems are of sufficient complexity that testing is infeasible, both computationally and financially. As an alternative, formal methods promote mathematical analysis of a system as a means of locating inconsistencies and other design errors. Techniques used can range from writing system descriptions in a formal notation to verification that the designed system satisfies a particular behavioral specification. A good general introduction to formal methods appears in Rushby [1993]. Ideally, using formal methods increases our assurance in and understanding of our designs. Assurance results from proof, while understanding results from the process of producing the proof. Successful use of formal methods therefore requires powerful proof techniques and clear logical notations. The verification research community has paid considerable attention to the former. Current techniques, many of which can be fully automated, handle sufficiently complex systems that formal methods are now being adopted (albeit slowly) in industry. In our drive to provide powerful proof methods, however, we have overlooked the latter requirement. Research has focused on proof without paying sufficient attention to reasoning. Current tools are often criticized as too hard to use, despite their computational power. Most designers, not having been trained as logicians, find the methodologies and notations very unnatural. Industrial sites, starting out with formal methods, must often rely on external verification professionals to help them use these tools effectively (NASA [1995]). Tools that are not supportive of reasoning therefore fail to provide the full benefits of formal methods. We can augment our current methodologies to address this problem, but we first need to understand reasoning and its role in hardware design.