On Bridging Simulation and Formal Verification

Abstract

Simulation and formal verification are two complementary techniques for checking the correctness of hardware and software designs. Formal verification proves that a design property holds for all points of the search space while simulation checks this property by probing the search space at a subset of points. A known fact is that simulation works surprisingly well taking into account the negligible part of the search space covered by test points. We explore this phenomenon by the example of the satisfiability problem (SAT). We believe that the success of simulation can be understood if one interprets a set of test points not as a sample of the search space, but as an “encryption” of a formal proof. We introduce the notion of a sufficient test set of a CNF formula as a test set encrypting a formal proof that this formula is unsatisfiable. We show how sufficient test sets can be built. We discuss applications of tight sufficient test sets for testing technological faults (manufacturing testing) and design changes (functional verification) and give some experimental results.