iPSL: An Environment for IP-Based PSL Specification

In PSL, behavioral properties of an IP core and its environment are directed by different directives. Improperly directed properties will severely impact the validity of refinement verification, specification assurance, and the evolution of specification hierarchy. In this paper, we introduce a tool iPSL which supports users to apply IP-based design methodology to PSL specifications. iPSL incorporates three methods for principled construction of PSL specifications. 1) We propose rules which restrict operand types of temporal operators so that we can check whether properties are correctly directed in expressing their roles. 2) We propose semantics for composing IP-based PSL specification. With the semantics, we can pick out properties which need further abstractions after composition. 3) We also provide a semantics for the inherit operator so that we can evolve a system specification from those of existing IP cores.