SHF: Small: Exploring Swarm Intelligence for Design Validation

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

The likelihood of hidden, subtle bugs increases with growing design sizes, and reaching corner cases in large circuits and systems in order to expose such subtle bugs has become a daunting task. Verifying the correctness of the design is now a tremendous bottleneck in the overall design process. Critical to the effectiveness of stimuli generation is the quality of guidance and feedback provided during the search. The objective of this research is to elicit the swarming power to solve this very difficult problem, which has not been done in the past. Individual knowledge acquired during the search is extracted to benefit collective effort. This is enabled via cultivation of knowledge exchange, accumulation, and utilization. The intelligent partitioning and grouping of the state variables allows for the construction of many effective abstract navigation tracks in large designs, benefiting the swarm platform. The development of new theories and algorithms will be an original contribution that will allow for transformative understanding of semi-formal verification and state space exploration, all in a rigorous framework. The theories and practice that will result from this work will not only enable us for a deeper understanding of collective effort, this project will directly promote the education of the involved students. In regard to outreach to under-represented students, the PI currently advises multiple women Ph.D. students (under-represented in engineering), and this project will continue to encourage aspiring female students to participate in the research endeavor. In addition, the PI will actively recruit summer minority interns from programs within Virginia Tech to take part in this project.