InFormal Chat

You don’t have to take my word for it: Machine Learning has a place in Formal Verification

Posted by Sean Safarpour on August 29th, 2018

Just over a year ago I wrote a blog about the impact of machine learning (ML) algorithms to boost Formal Verification performance . The data for that blog was firsthand experience on a set of complex benchmarks. The data was amazing and quite convincing, but when I wrote that blog the reader needed to “trust” me […]

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World Cup Champion and Formal Verification at DAC 2018

Posted by Xiaolin Chen on July 16th, 2018

What an exciting World Cup 2018! The whole world was glued to the television. People were rooting for their favorite teams and in awe of the skills demonstrated by many players. The spirit of World Cup reminds of this year’s DAC event, just a few weeks ago. This year DAC seemed different than previous years, with a […]

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Managing Initial State to Head Start Formal Verification

Posted by Iain Singleton on June 20th, 2018

Wouldn’t it be nice to get a head start on some things in life? How great would it be to just be able to walk straight to the front of any queue you find yourself in? For me, I’d like a head start on those long flights from the UK to California. If I could […]

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Artificial Intelligence, let us get the math right first!

Posted by Ravindra Aneja on May 22nd, 2018

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic these days and therefore doesn’t require a repeat of the current and future potential uses for AI. For most people it means technology advancements on the software side but If you ask people who are very close to this technology domain, building your own optimized hardware chips is where […]

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Formal Verification Showcase – DVCon 2018 and SNUG Silicon Valley 2018

Posted by Ravindra Aneja on April 12th, 2018

It should not be news to the readers that Formal verification is an integral part of verification flows for the majority of leading edge SoC design and IP companies. A good indicator for this is the amount of papers, posters and tutorials presented at recent industry events/conferences in Silicon Valley. Formal verification was very well […]

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Don’t have a Meltdown over a Spectre in your SoC

Posted by Anders Nordstrom on March 20th, 2018

You may be concerned about the widely published Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities affecting most processors, and if your phone and computer are OK. Or more importantly, if you are designing or verifying SoCs, do you have a specter in your design? Let’s first look at what these two vulnerabilities are and how they are affecting […]

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Deep or Broad : Let’s settle this once and for all!

Posted by Sean Safarpour on February 21st, 2018

Have you ever witnessed two passionate industry experts debate fundamental approaches of verification? They bring their decades of experience, hundreds of bugs uncovered, and countless successes and failures in order to establish intellectual dominance. Unfortunately, for most of us, the observers, these debates are usually prematurely interrupted by a reality check: a pointy-haired manager who urges […]

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Corner case bugs – Formal got you covered

Posted by Iain Singleton on February 2nd, 2018

Imagine the scene. It’s Friday night, and you’ve decided to relax and watch a movie. Given the overwhelming amount of choices, you’ve already spent over an hour watching trailers to choose the movie and you’re finally almost ready to go. All that’s left is the popcorn. You go over to the microwave and get it […]

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DVCon 2018 Tutorial – The Magic of Formal Revealed

Posted by Sean Safarpour on January 22nd, 2018

We have all witnessed many magic tricks that seem to perform the impossible. How did he guess my number? Where did that rabbit come from? How did she survive getting sawed in two? Without knowing the tricks of the trade, it is very hard for you and I to reproduce such magic. The same holds […]

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Divide and Conquer – Formal for Large Designs

Posted by Iain Singleton on December 11th, 2017

As we have discussed in several of the blogs on this forum, successful deployment of Formal verification requires knowing where and how to use it. Building up an arsenal of techniques that can be applied to deal with complexity and knowing how to use them safely is a necessity for every expert Formal engineer. So […]

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