Spring 2016        Mon-Wed 11:00-12:20  PM       Location: Caruth Hall 161

CLASS INSTRUCTOR
Mitch Thornton, Caruth Hall 481, mitch@lyle.smu.edu

OFFICE HOURS
Mon, Wed: 10:00-10:50AM in Caruth 481, or by email appointment
 
DISABILITY ACCOMMODATIONS
Students needing academic accommodations for a disability must first be registered with Disability Accommodations & Success Strategies (DASS) to verify the disability and to establish eligibility for accommodations. Students may call 214-768-1470 or visit http://www.smu.edu/alec/dass to begin the process. Once registered, students should then schedule an appointment with the professor to make appropriate arrangements.  (See University Policy No. 2.4.)

OBSERVANCE OF RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS
Religiously observant students wishing to be absent on holidays that require missing class should notify their professors in writing at the beginning of the semester, and should discuss with them, in advance, acceptable ways of making up any work missed because of the absence.  (See University Policy No. 1.9.)

EXCUSED ABSENCES FOR UNIVERSITY EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Students participating in an officially sanctioned, scheduled University extracurricular activity should be given the opportunity to make up class assignments or other graded assignments missed as a result of their participation. It is the responsibility of the student to make arrangements with the instructor prior to any missed scheduled examination or other missed assignment for making up the work.  (See the University Undergraduate Catalog).
 
TEXT
Li, L. and Thornton, M.A., Digital System Verification: A Combined Formal Methods and Simulation Framework, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, San Rafael, California, ISBN 9781608451784 (hardcopy), ISBN 9781608451791 (eBook), February 2010.

SOFTWARE
Use of the gcc compiler, working knowledge of the Linux operating system, elementary C lanuage programming, the Linux make utility.

REFERENCE
1.    Kropf, T., Introduction to Formal Hardware Hardware Verification, Springer-Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-540-65445-3.
2.    Meinel, C. and Theobold, T., Algorithms and Data Structures in VLSI Design, Springer, 1998, ISBN 3-540-64486-5.
3.    Huang, S.-Y. and Cheng, K.-T., Formal Equivalence Checking and Design Debugging, Kluwer Academic Publishers (now merged with Springer), 1998, ISBN 0-7923-8184-X
4.    Clarke, E.M., Grumberg, O., and Peled, D.A., Model Checking, The MIT Press, 1999, ISBN 0-262-03270-8.
5.    Miller, D.M. and Thornton, M.A., Multiple Valued Logic Concepts and Representations, 2008, ISBN 1-59829-190-4.

CATALOG DESCRIPTION
Detecting and correcting  integrated circuit design errors before device fabrication is an increasingly complex and costly problem.  A large amount of effort is expended in the design verification and validation process in industry.  This course will survey the most common approaches used in industry and in other research environments.  Tradeoffs between formal methods and validation techniques will be emphasized and commercial state-of-the-art software tools will be used.  Topics to be considered are equivalence checking, model checking, theorem proving and advanced topics in validation and simulation. 

PREREQUISITES
Knowledge of basic discrete mathematics, ability to program in a language such as C, and basic digital design principles. Data structure knowledge useful but not absolutely required.

ADMINISTRATION
Class Schedule
Grading Policy (Student Acknowledgement Form)

TOPICS

• Formal Verification Background
  
• Equivalence Checking
• Model Checking
• Validation