Optimized temporal monitors for SystemC

  • Authors:
  • Deian Tabakov;Kristin Y. Rozier;Moshe Y. Vardi

  • Affiliations:
  • Schlumberger Information Solutions, Houston, USA 77056;NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, USA 94035;Rice University, Houston, USA 77005

  • Venue:
  • Formal Methods in System Design
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

SystemC is a modeling language built as an extension of C++. Its growing popularity and the increasing complexity of designs have motivated research efforts aimed at the verification of SystemC models using assertion-based verification (ABV), where the designer asserts properties that capture the design intent in a formal language such as PSL or SVA. The model then can be verified against the properties using runtime or formal verification techniques. In this paper we focus on automated generation of runtime monitors from temporal properties. Our focus is on minimizing runtime overhead, rather than monitor size or monitor-generation time. We identify four issues in monitor generation: state minimization, alphabet representation, alphabet minimization, and monitor encoding. We conduct extensive experimentation and identify a combination of settings that offers the best performance in terms of runtime overhead.