Simulation-guided property checking based on multi-valued AR-automata

The verification of digital designs, i.e., hardware or embedded hardware/software systems, is an important task in the design process. Often more than 70% of the development time is spent for locating and correcting errors in the design. Therefore, many techniques have been proposed to support the debugging process. Recently, simulation and test methods have been accompanied by formal methods such as equivalence checking and property checking. However their industrial applicability is currently restricted to small or medium sized designs or to a specific phase in the design cycle. In this paper, we present a method for verifying temporal properties of systems described in an executable description language. Our method allows the user to specify properties about the system in finite linear time temporal logic. These properties are translated to a special kind of finite state machines which are then efficiently checked on-the-fly during each simulation run. Properties may be placed anywhere in the system description and violations are immediately indicated to the designer.