The switch-level model represents a digital metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) circuit as a network of charge storage nodes connected by resistive transistor switches. The functionality of such a network can be expressed as a series of systems of Boolean equations. Solving these equations symbolically yields a set of Boolean formulas that describe the mapping from input and current state to the new network state. This analysis supports the same class of networks as the switch-level simulator MOSSIM II and provides the same functionality, including the handling of bidirectional e ects and indeterminate (X) logic values. In the worst case, the analysis of an n node network can yield a set of formulas containing a total of O(n 3) operations. However, all but a limited set of dense, pass-transistor networks give formulas with O(n) total operations. The analysis can serve as the basis of e cient programs for a variety oflogic design tasks, including: logic simulation (on both conventional and special purpose computers), fault simulation, test generation, and symbolic veri cation.

The cosmos simulator provides fast and accurate switch-level modeling of mos digital circuits. It attains high performance by preprocessing the transistor network into a functionally equivalent Boolean representation. This description, produced by the symbolic analyzer anamos, captures all aspects of switch-level networks including bidirectional transistors, stored charge, different signal strengths, and indeterminate (X) logic values. The lgcc program translates the Boolean representation into a set of machine language evaluation procedures and initialized data structures. These procedures and data structures are compiled along with code implementing the simulation kernel and user interface to produce the simulation program. The simulation program runs an order of magnitude faster than our previous simulator mossim ii.

This paper describes a diagnosis technique for locating design errors in circuit implementations which do not match their functional specification. The method efficiently propagates mismatched patterns from erroneous outputs backward into the network and calculates circuit regions which most likely contain the error(s). In contrast to previous approaches, the described technique does not depend on a fixed set of error models. Therefore, it is more general and especially suitable for transistor-level circuits, which have a broader variety of possible design errors than gate-level implementations. Furthermore, the proposed method is also applicable for incomplete sets of mismatched patterns and hence can be used not only as a debugging aid for formal verification techniques but also for simulationbased approaches. Experiments with industrial CMOS circuits show that for most design errors the identified problem region is less than 3% of the overall circuit.

In an effort to fully exploit CMOS performance, custom design techniques are used extensively in commercial microprocessor design. However, given the complexity of current generation processors and the necessity for manual designer intervention throughout the design process, proving design correctness is a major concern. In this paper we discuss Verity, a formal verification program for symbolically proving the equivalence between a high-level design specification and a MOS transistor-level implementation. Verity

A network of switches controlled by Boolean variables can be represented as a system of Boolean equations. The solution of this system gives a symbolic description of the conducting paths in the network. Gaussian elimination provides an efficient technique for solving sparse systems of Boolean equations. For the class of networks that arise when analyzing digital metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) circuits, a simple pivot selection rule guarantees that most s switch networks encountered in practice can be solved with O(s) operations. When represented by a directed acyclic graph, the set of Boolean formulas generated by the analysis has total size bounded by the number of operations required by the Gaussian elimination. This paper presents the mathematical basis for systems of Boolean equations, their solution by Gaussian elimination, and data structures and algorithms for representing and manipulating Boolean formulas.

The program MOSSYM simulates the behavior of a MOS circuit represented as a switch-level network symbolically. That is, during simulator operation the user can set an input to either 0, 1, or a Boolean variable. The simulator then computes the behavior of the circuit as a function of the past and present input variables. By using heuristically efficient Boolean function manipulation algorithms, the verification of a circuit by symbolic simulation can proceed much more quickly than by exhaustive logic simulation. In this paper we present our concept of symbolic simulation, derive an algorithm for switch-level symbolic simulation, and present experimental measurements from MOSSYM.