Solver technology for system-level to RTL equivalence checking

Authors:
Alfred Koelbl;Reily Jacoby;Himanshu Jain;Carl Pixley
Affiliations:
Verification Group Synopsys, Inc., Hillsboro, OR;Verification Group Synopsys, Inc., Hillsboro, OR;Verification Group Synopsys, Inc., Hillsboro, OR;Verification Group Synopsys, Inc., Hillsboro, OR
Venue:
Proceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe
Year:
2009

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Abstract

Checking the equivalence of a system-level model against an RTL design is a major challenge. The reason is that usually the system-level model is written by a system architect, whereas the RTL implementation is created by a hardware designer. This approach leads to two models that are significantly different. Checking the equivalence of real-life designs requires strong solver technology. The challenges can only be overcome with a combination of bit-level and word-level reasoning techniques, combined with the right orchestration. In this paper, we discuss solver technology that has shown to be effective on many real-life equivalence checking problems.