Assessing performance of a hardware design using formal evaluation logic

    公开(公告)号:US12175179B2

    公开(公告)日:2024-12-24

    申请号:US18076231

    申请日:2022-12-06

    Abstract: A hardware monitor arranged to assess performance of a hardware design for an integrated circuit to complete a task. The hardware monitor includes monitoring and counting logic configured to count a number of cycles between start and completion of the symbolic task in the hardware design; and property evaluation logic configured to evaluate one or more formal properties related to the counted number of cycles to assess the performance of the hardware design in completing the symbolic task. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the hardware design meets a desired performance goal and/or to exhaustively identify a performance metric (e.g. best case and/or worst case performance) with respect to completion of the task.

    Detecting out-of-bounds violations in a hardware design using formal verification

    公开(公告)号:US11663386B2

    公开(公告)日:2023-05-30

    申请号:US17573611

    申请日:2022-01-11

    CPC classification number: G06F30/3323 G06F11/0754 G06F11/3466 G06F30/39

    Abstract: A hardware monitor arranged to detect out-of-bounds violations in a hardware design for an electronic device. The hardware monitors include monitor and detection logic configured to monitor the current operating state of an instantiation of the hardware design and detect when the instantiation of the hardware design implements a fetch of an instruction from memory; and assertion evaluation logic configured to evaluate one or more assertions that assert a formal property that compares the memory address of the fetched instruction to an allowable memory address range associated with the current operating state of the instantiation of the hardware design to determine whether there has been an out-of-bounds violation. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the hardware design does not cause an instruction to be fetched from an out-of-bounds address.

    Assessing performance of a hardware design using formal evaluation logic

    公开(公告)号:US11531799B2

    公开(公告)日:2022-12-20

    申请号:US17184186

    申请日:2021-02-24

    Abstract: A hardware monitor arranged to assess performance of a hardware design for an integrated circuit to complete a task. The hardware monitor includes monitoring and counting logic configured to count a number of cycles between start and completion of the symbolic task in the hardware design; and property evaluation logic configured to evaluate one or more formal properties related to the counted number of cycles to assess the performance of the hardware design in completing the symbolic task. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the hardware design meets a desired performance goal and/or to exhaustively identify a performance metric (e.g. best case and/or worst case performance) with respect to completion of the task.

    Livelock Detection in a Hardware Design Using Formal Evaluation Logic

    公开(公告)号:US20220277124A1

    公开(公告)日:2022-09-01

    申请号:US17749054

    申请日:2022-05-19

    Abstract: A hardware monitor arranged to detect livelock in a hardware design for an integrated circuit. The hardware monitor includes monitor and detection logic configured to detect when a particular state has occurred in an instantiation of the hardware design; and assertion evaluation logic configured to periodically evaluate one or more assertions that assert a formal property related to reoccurrence of the particular state in the instantiation of the hardware design to detect whether the instantiation of the hardware design is in a livelock comprising the predetermined state. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the instantiation of the hardware design cannot enter a livelock comprising the predetermined state.

    FORMAL VERIFICATION TOOL TO VERIFY HARDWARE DESIGN OF MEMORY UNIT

    公开(公告)号:US20220139480A1

    公开(公告)日:2022-05-05

    申请号:US17573542

    申请日:2022-01-11

    Abstract: Hardware monitors which can be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify a hardware design for a memory unit. The hardware monitors include detection logic to monitor one or more control signals and/or data signals of an instantiation of the memory unit to detect symbolic writes and symbolic reads. In some examples a symbolic write is a write of symbolic data to a symbolic address; and in other examples a symbolic write is a write of any data to a symbolic address. A symbolic read is a read of the symbolic address. The hardware monitors also include assertion verification logic that verifies an assertion that read data corresponding to a symbolic reads matches write data associated with one or more symbolic writes preceding the read.

    Out-of-bounds recovery circuit
    7.
    发明授权

    公开(公告)号:US11030039B2

    公开(公告)日:2021-06-08

    申请号:US17028253

    申请日:2020-09-22

    Abstract: Out-of-bounds recovery circuits configured to detect an out-of-bounds violation in an electronic device, and cause the electronic device to transition to a predetermined safe state when an out-of-bounds violation is detected. The out-of-bounds recovery circuits include detection logic configured to detect that an out-of-bounds violation has occurred when a processing element of the electronic device has fetched an instruction from an unallowable memory address range for the current operating state of the electronic device; and transition logic configured to cause the electronic device to transition to a predetermined safe state when an out-of-bounds violation has been detected by the detection logic.

    VERIFYING FIRMWARE BINARY IMAGES USING A HARDWARE DESIGN AND FORMAL ASSERTIONS

    公开(公告)号:US20210150031A1

    公开(公告)日:2021-05-20

    申请号:US17158798

    申请日:2021-01-26

    Inventor: Ashish Darbari

    Abstract: Described herein are hardware monitors arranged to detect illegal firmware instructions in a firmware binary image using a hardware design and one or more formal assertions. The hardware monitors include monitor and detection logic configured to detect when an instantiation of the hardware design has started and/or stopped execution of the firmware and to detect when the instantiation of the hardware design has decoded an illegal firmware instruction. The hardware monitors also include assertion evaluation logic configured to determine whether the firmware binary image comprises an illegal firmware instruction by evaluating one or more assertions that assert that if a stop of firmware execution has been detected, that a decode of an illegal firmware instruction has (or has not) been detected. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the firmware boot image does not comprise an illegal firmware instruction, or during simulation to detect illegal firmware instructions in a firmware boot image.

    Detecting out-of-bounds violations in a hardware design using formal verification

    公开(公告)号:US10755011B2

    公开(公告)日:2020-08-25

    申请号:US15784353

    申请日:2017-10-16

    Abstract: A hardware monitor arranged to detect out-of-bounds violations in a hardware design for an electronic device. The hardware monitors include monitor and detection logic configured to monitor the current operating state of an instantiation of the hardware design and detect when the instantiation of the hardware design implements a fetch of an instruction from memory; and assertion evaluation logic configured to evaluate one or more assertions that assert a formal property that compares the memory address of the fetched instruction to an allowable memory address range associated with the current operating state of the instantiation of the hardware design to determine whether there has been an out-of-bounds violation. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the hardware design does not cause an instruction to be fetched from an out-of-bounds address.

    Control path verification of hardware design for pipelined process

    公开(公告)号:US10325044B2

    公开(公告)日:2019-06-18

    申请号:US15143772

    申请日:2016-05-02

    Abstract: Methods and systems for verifying that logic for implementing a pipelined process in hardware correctly moves data through the pipelined process. The method includes: (a) monitoring data input to the pipelined process to determine when watched data has been input to the pipelined process; (b) in response to determining the watched data has been input to the pipelined process counting a number of progressing clock cycles for the watched data; and (c) evaluating an assertion written in an assertion based language, the assertion establishing that when the watched data is output from the pipelined process the counted number of progressing clock cycles for the watched data should be equal to one of one or more predetermined values.

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