Unified Formal Verification and Fault Injection Interface
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current formal property verification environments for integrated circuit designs are inefficient in detecting faults due to the separate and sequential operation of fault injection and verification tools, leading to high computational resource usage and usability issues in debugging and correcting non-detected faults.
Innovation Solution
A unified system that integrates formal property verification and fault injection environments, allowing seamless interaction between the two, enabling users to select and configure faults interactively, visualize relationships between faults and checkers, and modify the verification environment for improved fault detection and correction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If fault injection tool runs formal property verification in batch mode for each fault sequentially, then fault detection capability is maintained, but computational resource usage increases and processing time becomes too long to be practical
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the fault injection tool and formal property verification tool into a single integrated environment. This allows multiple faults to be injected and verified simultaneously rather than sequentially, dramatically improving processing speed while maintaining fault detection capability. The unified interface enables batch processing of multiple faults in parallel.
Solution Approach 2:
The integrated verification environment provides multi-functionality by combining fault injection capabilities, formal property verification, and interactive debugging in one system. This universal platform can handle multiple verification tasks simultaneously, including injecting different types of faults (behavioral, structural), running formal properties, and providing interactive analysis, thereby improving overall productivity without sacrificing reliability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If fault injection tool operates independently with separate user interface, then fault injection functionality is provided, but user interaction and debugging capability for formal verification environment is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the user interfaces of the fault injection tool and formal property verification tool into a single unified interface. This allows users to interact with both fault injection and verification functions simultaneously, enabling direct debugging of the formal verification environment while maintaining comprehensive fault injection capabilities. The unified interface provides seamless navigation between fault analysis and verification tasks.
3Reliability
If multiple formal property checkers are added to detect non-detected faults, then fault coverage completeness improves, but verification environment complexity and setup time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The integrated verification environment provides self-service capabilities by automatically analyzing non-detected faults and suggesting appropriate formal property checkers. The system can autonomously identify gaps in fault coverage and recommend or automatically add missing checkers, reducing the manual effort and complexity involved in expanding verification coverage. This intelligent automation maintains high fault coverage completeness while minimizing environment complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
In one aspect, a fault injection environment and a formal property verification environment are combined in a single integrated flow that allows the user to go back and forth between the two tasks. A system that unifies formal property verification and fault injection includes user interfaces that support the unified use model. In one approach, the FPV tool is the master and its user interface is the primary interface for the user to set up, run and debug faults as well as checkers. This interface allows the user to interactively select the FPV properties and/or the faults to be used for fault analysis. The user interface may provide a view of the faults, for example by listing faults or summarizing faults by class, type, etc.