An approach for the formal verification of DSP designs using theorem proving

This paper proposes a framework for the incorporation of formal methods in the design flow of digital signal processing (DSP) systems in a rigorous way. In the proposed approach, DSP descriptions were modeled and verified at different abstraction levels using higher order logic based on the higher order logic (HOL) theorem prover. This framework enables the formal verification of DSP designs that in the past could only be done partially using conventional simulation techniques. To this end, a shallow embedding of DSP descriptions in HOL at the floating-point (FP), fixed-point (FXP), behavioral, register transfer level (RTL), and netlist gate levels is provided. The paper made use of existing formalization of FP theory in HOL and a parallel one developed for FXP arithmetic. The high ability of abstraction in HOL allows a seamless hierarchical verification encompassing the whole DSP design path, starting from top-level FP and FXP algorithmic descriptions down to RTL, and gate level implementations. The paper illustrates the new verification framework on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm as a case study.