. In this article we present a structured approach to formal hardware verification by modelling circuits at the register-transfer level using a restricted form of higher-order logic. This restricted form of higher-order logic is sufficient for obtaining succinct descriptions of hierarchically designed register-transfer circuits. By exploiting the structure of the underlying hardware proofs and limiting the form of descriptions used, we have attained nearly complete automation in proving the equivalences of the specifications and implementations. A hardware-specific tool called MEPHISTO converts the original goal into a set of simpler subgoals, which are then automatically solved by a general-purpose, first-order prover called FAUST. Furthermore, the complete verification framework is being integrated within a commercial VLSI CAD framework. Keywords: hardware verification, higher-order logic 1 Introduction The past decade has witnessed the spiralling of interest within the academic com...

) Ramayya Kumar, Thomas Kropf, Klaus Schneider University of Karlsruhe, Institute of Computer Design and Fault Tolerance (Prof. Dr. ##. Schmid) P.O. Box 6980, W-7500 Karlsruhe, Germany 1. INTRODUCTION The use of higher-order logic and an associated interactive theorem proving environment for hardware verification has established itself as an important technique for formal hardware validation [CaGM 86, FFFH 89]. In spite of the fact that such techniques are powerful and can be used for validation of complex systems, they continue to remain purely within the purview of theorem proving specialists. The only way to bring such a system closer to circuit designers is to augment the degree of automation and provide a camouflaged environment which mirrors the designer's view of hardware. The first step in this direction is to automate the proofs of all first-order and simple higher-order statements, within such systems, which has been achieved by the tool FAUST [KuKS 91, ScKK 91a]. Further aut...