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Combining Operational Semantics, Logic Programming and Literate Programming in the Specification and Animation of the Verilog Hardware Description Language

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Integrated Formal Methods (IFM 2000)

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Abstract

An operational semantics for a significant subset of the Verilog Hardware Description Language (HDL) has been developed. An unusual aspect of the semantics is that it was formulated as a Prolog logic program. This allows the possibility of simulating the semantics. In addition, a literate programming style has been used, so the semantics can be processed by the LATEX document preparation system with minimal and fully automated preprocessing. Bringing together the paradigms of operational semantics, logic programming and literate programming in this manner has proved a great aid in a number of ways. It has helped improve the understanding of the semantics, in the formalization of semantic aspects left informal in the original mathematical formulation of the semantics, and in the maintenance of the formal semantics and its associated informal description. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Introduction to Mathematics (1911) ch. 5 Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

Work originally undertaken while on leave as a Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU/IIST), Macau.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics (SCISM), South Bank University, Centre for Applied Formal Methods, Borough Road, London, SE1 0AA, UK

    Jonathan P. Bowen

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  1. Jonathan P. Bowen
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  1. Sekr.FR 5-13 bzw.5-6, TU Berlin, Franklinstr.28-29, 10587, Berlin, Germany

    Wolfgang Grieskamp  & Thomas Santen  & 

  2. School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK

    Bill Stoddart

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Bowen, J.P. (2000). Combining Operational Semantics, Logic Programming and Literate Programming in the Specification and Animation of the Verilog Hardware Description Language. In: Grieskamp, W., Santen, T., Stoddart, B. (eds) Integrated Formal Methods. IFM 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1945. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-40911-4_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-40911-4_16

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