Digital Design Derivation System for Hardware Synthesis

The promise of formal methods to eliminate design errors in safety critical systems is realizable, however, much of the technology remains academic or removed from current engineering practice. At Derivation Systems, Inc. we believe that in over for formal methods to reach their full potential, a formal design tool must support the generative and deductive aspects of design. We also believe that for a formal design tool to be practical, it must integrate with existing logic synthesis tools to generate hardware realizations. We propose the development of DRS (Derivational Reasoning System), a design tool which reflects a formal approach to digital design founded in derivational reasoning. The significance of the innovation is the development of a design tool which integrates derivation with existing verification and logic synthesis tools in a unified framework. This will allow designers to construct correct hardware from high level abstract specifications.