Complete and Efficient Verification for a RISC-V Processor Using Formal Verification

Formal verification techniques are computationally complex and the exact time and space complexities are in general not known, which makes the performance of the process unpredictable. Some of the recent works have shown that it is possible to carry out formal verification with polynomial time and space complexities for specific designs like arithmetic circuits. However, the methodology used cannot be directly extended to complex designs like processors. A recent work has shown polynomial verification of a single-cycle RISC- V processor with limited functionality, which considers only the combinational parts of the AL U. In this paper we propose for the first time a complete verification approach that covers all the functional units of the processor, and at the same time considers its sequential behavior. Experimental results show that the verification can be carried out in polynomial time, and also demonstrate significant improvement over previous methods.