REASONING ABOUT ASYNCHRONOUS DESIGNS IN CCS

Abstract

With VLSI technology advancing rapidly, synchronous designers are finding it difficult to distribute clock signals and maintain functionality as more circuitry is packed onto chips. Ways out of the dilemma are to raise the level of abstraction and to use simple and standard rules of composition. These are amongst the advantages offered by asynchronous design. For years, designs have been ``verified'' via simulation at various levels. Attention is now being paid to formal methods which use induction proofs over regular structures in two steps and give full coverage over all input/output sequences. This thesis brings the formal methods to bear on the asynchronous hardware design style. A parallel specification style is developed which scales well when the number of inputs to a system increases and a testing style based upon the modal $ mu $-calculus is proposed to test the consequences of specifications. Several non-trivial designs are evaluated by this methodology.