Derivation and verification represent alternate approaches to design. Derivation aims at deriving a "correct by construction" design while verification aims at constructing a post factum "proof of correctness" for a design. However, as researchers and engineers gain design experience in a formal framework, both approaches are emerging as interdependent facets of design. The thesis of this work is that alternate forms of formal reasoning must be integrated if formal methods are to support the natural analytical and generative reasoning that takes place in engineering practice. As a vehicle for this research, the DDD digital design derivation system was implemented to study formal hardware design in an algebraic framework. DDD is a first-order transformation system which mechanizes a basic design algebra for synthesizing digital circuit descriptions from high-level functional specifications. The system is a collection of correctness preserving transformations that promote a topdown desig...

this paper develops such a scheme, called "hardware description with recursion equations" (abbreviated HDRE and pronounced as hydra). A designer using HDRE may describe a circuit using a simple set of primitive functions written in an underlying general purpose programming language, and the description itself is just a function written in that language. Executing a circuit description function provides its meaning --- its semantic content.

This 2-year project description is part of the Digital Design Derivation Project of the Hardware Methods Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Indiana University.

This research applies formal methods in logic, verification, and synthesis to digital design engineering. The work centers on the use of applicative notation for system description and functional algebras for design development. The general goal is to develop a comprehensive methodology for constructing correct hardware

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