Personal Opinion on Future Role of Formal Verification in Hardware

Industry

W. Paul Universität Saarbrückenwiss. Gesamtprojektleiter

bmb+f Projekt Verisoft

Verisoft 1: 2003-2007

• 3.5 Mio €/year• Partners: infineon,…• Mission (industrial)

– Verify high end controllers

• Mission (academic)– Verify stacks– Processor, devices,

drivers, compiler, kernel, OS, client/server, TCP, real time….

• 2003: verified lab prototype (processor, 1.5 Mio gate equivalents)

Industrial Processor VerificationOneSpin Solutions (2006)

• Tools tightly coupled to production flow• Prove hundreds of properties by bounded model

checking (> 90 % effort)• Combine to correctness proof in interactive

prover (< 10 % effort)• Cheaper than conventional testing• New masks…• 14 Mio € Venture Capital

Conclusions 1

• Tools tightly coupled to production flow• It can be done; do it.• Cheaper than conventional testing• Use formal methods as soon as finding bugs by

testing becomes slow• Everybody does it for FPUs.

– among the most complex constructions in computer science

– Learn to do it for more units

Verisoft 2 (2007-2010, planned)

• Formal proof of kernel written in C with in line assembler code expected 2007 (Verisoft 1)

• Mission (Industrial)• Verify and certify OS

related product code,• Partners

– Automotive– Avionics– Microsoft

• High end processors

A Grand Embarassement

• High end processors are flagship products of our field

• We presently don‘t know how to define their ISA formally (i.e. don‘t know what exactly they are doing)

• Necessary for complete formal verification• We better fix that asap

Mathematics Literacy in CS

• Very much of applied computer science as a whole can be presented as a mathematical theory

• Faster/more precise than usual hand waving

• applied CS textbooks will have mix of text/pictures/math familiar from classical engineering disciplines

Conclusion 2The Mathematically Clumsy CS Engineer

• Endangered species

• Near future: jobs moved off shore

• But: off shore countries educate mathematically literate CS engineers…

• Hire mathematically literate engineers as quickly as you can

• Put pressure on universities to educate them