Sequential equivalence checking without state space traversal

Because general algorithms for sequential equivalence checking require a state space traversal of the product machine, they are computationally expensive. In this paper we present a new method for sequential equivalence checking which utilizes functionally equivalent signals to prove the equivalence of both circuits, thereby avoiding the state space traversal. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experimental results on retimed and optimized ISCAS'89 benchmarks.