Scalable exploration of functional dependency by interpolation and incremental SAT solving

Functional dependency is concerned with rewriting a Boolean function f as a function h over a set of base functions {g1, …, gn}, i.e. f = h(g1, …, gn). It plays an important role in many aspects of electronics design automation (EDA), ranging from logic synthesis to formal verification. Prior approaches to the exploration of functional dependency are based on binary decision diagrams (BDDs), which may not be easily scalable to large designs. This paper proposes a novel reformulation that extensively exploits the capability of modern satisfiability (SAT) solvers. Thereby, functional dependency is detected effectively through incremental SAT solving and the dependency function h, if exists, is obtained through Craig interpolation. The main strengths of the proposed approach include: (1) fast detection of functional dependency with small memory consumption and thus scalable to large designs, (2) a full capacity to handle a large set of base functions and thus discovering dependency w...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICCAD
• Authors: Chih-Chun Lee, Jie-Hong Roland Jiang, Chung-Yang Huang, Alan Mishchenko
• Keywords: Dependency Function H, Functional Dependency, Hardware, ICCAD 2007, Large-scale Logic Optimization