Selective Circuit Component Transformation for Low Power Verification
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Solution Overview
Problem
The process of verifying electronic circuit designs for low-power conditions has become complex due to the increasing demand for power management in battery-operated devices and shrinking process nodes, leading to significant computing resource consumption and delays, especially with the need for transforming millions of components in large designs.
Innovation Solution
Implementing selective transformation of components during verification, where only observable components that affect the design's behavior are transformed, leveraging knowledge about the behavior of domains to identify a subset of components that need transformation, thereby simplifying the verification process.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If all components in the design are transformed to implement formal verification for low-power designs, then verification completeness is improved, but computing resource consumption increases significantly and verification time is extended
Solution Approach 1:
The verification process is segmented into two distinct phases: a filtering phase that identifies observable components using propagation analysis, and a transformation phase that applies power-aware transformations only to those identified components. This segmentation allows the system to maintain verification completeness while reducing the scope of expensive transformations to only necessary components.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of uniformly transforming all components, the patent applies transformations selectively based on local observability characteristics. Each component is analyzed individually to determine whether its transformation is necessary for verification, allowing high-quality verification where needed while avoiding unnecessary transformations elsewhere.
2Measurement precision
If power-aware transformations are applied to all components, then low-power verification accuracy is improved, but the complexity of the verification process increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs a preliminary filtering action before the main transformation process. By first identifying observable components through propagation analysis and then transforming only those components, the system simplifies the overall verification process while maintaining accuracy. This preliminary action prevents the complexity of transforming all components.
3Reliability
If transformations are performed on millions of components in large designs, then comprehensive power verification is achieved, but verification time increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and identifies only the necessary subset of observable components from the full design before applying transformations. By taking out only the components that require transformation for power verification, the system achieves comprehensive verification coverage for power-related issues while avoiding the time cost of transforming all millions of components in large designs.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is an improved approach to implement selective transformations of circuit components for performing verification. The approach looks at the observability of components to downstream properties to determine whether transformations are needed. The verification system leverages the knowledge about the behavior of the domains/components to identify only a subset of components that really need to undergo transformation.