Modern processors implement numerous optimizations for power, performance, and area. Optimizations such as pipelining, interlocking, and data forwarding introduce numerous data dependencies and hazards causing processors to deadlock or produce incorrect results. The number of instruction combinations, together with instruction interleaving and multiple register files and operands make it impossible for any simulation-based verification to be exhaustive.

Formal verification produces exhaustive proofs of correctness and finds corner-case bugs in design implementations. The challenges with formal verification, however, are:

• Proof convergence is not guaranteed
• No consistency of formal coverage models across different formal verification tools.
• No consistency between formal coverage models and simulation

The formalISA® app addresses all these challenges successfully. Built on top of the first-generation ISA formal verification proof kit from Axiomise, the formalISA® app is powered by a clean graphical-user-interface that allows the end-user to push a few buttons to obtain formal verification results on a RISC-V core of their choice, using a formal verification tool of their choice. The push-button ‘ Prove’ & ‘Cover’ solution eliminates the need to:

• Write a single test case
• Write complex test sequences
• Write scoreboard or checkers
• Write constraints
• Randomize stimulus

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