Self Consistency

Abstract

Self consistency is a technique for deriving a formal reference specification from the design to be verified. Intuitively, self consistency checks functional consistency of a circuit with perturbed inputs, running in different modes, or with an altered environment. This enables formal verification via symbolic simulation in the absence of a separate, formal specification. Self consistency can also facilitate problem reduction in formal verification. This chapter describes the formalization of both self consistency applications and contains illustrative examples. An early version of this work appeared in [JSD96].