Component-based hardware/software co-verification

We present a novel component-based approach to hardware/software co-verification of embedded systems using model checking. Due to their diverse applications and often strict physical constraints, embedded systems are increasingly component-based and include only the necessary components for their missions. In our approach, a component model for embedded systems which unifies the concepts of hardware IPs (i.e., hardware components) and software components is defined. Hardware and software components are verified as they are developed bottom-up. Whole systems are co-verified as they are developed topdown. Interactions of bottom-up and top-down verification are exploited to reduce verification complexity by facilitating compositional reasoning and verification reuse. Case studies on a suite of networked sensors have shown that our approach facilitates major verification reuse and leads to order-of-magnitude reduction on verification complexity.