A Formal Verification Method of Scheduling in High-level Synthesis

• Published in: 7th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED'06) pp. 71 - 78
• Main Authors: Karfa, C, Mandal, C, Sarkar, D, Pentakota, S R., Reade, Chris
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC, USA IEEE Computer Society 01.01.2006; IEEE
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Arithmetic; Automata; Automatic control; Data visualization; Flow graphs; Formal verification; Hardware > Electronic design automation > High-level and register-transfer level synthesis; Hardware > Hardware validation > Functional verification; High level synthesis; Merging; Processor scheduling; Scheduling algorithm; Theory of computation > Design and analysis of algorithms > Approximation algorithms analysis > Scheduling algorithms; Theory of computation > Design and analysis of algorithms > Online algorithms > Online learning algorithms > Scheduling algorithms; Theory of computation > Formal languages and automata theory; Theory of computation > Theory and algorithms for application domains > Machine learning theory > Reinforcement learning > Sequential decision making
• ISBN: 9780769525235; 0769525237
• ISSN: 1948-3287; 1948-3295
• DOI: 10.1109/ISQED.2006.10

This paper describes a formal method for checking the equivalence between the finite state machine with data path (FSMD) model of the high-level behavioural specification and the FSMD model of the behaviour transformed by the scheduler. The method consists in introducing cutpoints in one FSMD, visualizing its computations as concatenation of paths from cutpoints to cutpoints and finally, identifying equivalent finite path segments in the other FSMD; the process is then repeated with the FSMDs interchanged. The method is strong enough to accommodate merging of the segments in the original behaviour by the typical scheduler such as DLS, a feature very common in scheduling but not captured by many works reported in the literature. It also handles arithmetic transformations.