HW/SW Formal Co-Verification of Rust-based Designs Using Hardware Abstraction Model

IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI, pp. 1–6

Abstract

In recent years, Rust has emerged as a powerful programming language, offering significant advantages over traditional design languages such as C and $\mathrm{C}++$. Rust’s features, including memory safety, concurrency without data races, and a strong type system, make it uniquely suited for developing reliable and efficient embedded systems. Despite these benefits, formal hardware-software co-verification methods have not kept pace with the advancements in Rust. Current co-verification approaches often struggle with complexity and insufficient integration between hardware and software components, leading to incomplete verification processes and potential undetected bugs. To address these challenges, we propose a novel approach by constructing a Rust-based hardware abstraction model that seamlessly integrates both hardware and software verification. This model leverages Rust’s inherent safety features to facilitate a more robust co-verification process. Additionally, we have developed a comprehensive hardware-software co-verification framework that can be deployed throughout the entire development life cycle, from initial design to final deployment. This framework ensures continuous and thorough verification, significantly reducing the likelihood of undetected bugs. We applied our proposed framework to several industrial and open-source designs, demonstrating its effectiveness in identifying multiple bugs in a significantly reduced time frame. The results highlight the efficiency and reliability of our Rust-based hardware-software co-verification framework, paving the way for more secure and robust system designs in the future.

Authors 7

1. Sascha Neske

   Infineon Technologies (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Infineon Technologies AG

2. Bryan Olmos

   Infineon Technologies (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Infineon Technologies AG

3. Shuhang Zhang

   Infineon Technologies (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Infineon Technologies AG

4. M. Kroening Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Rheinisch Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen

5. Stefan Lankes Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Rheinisch Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen

6. Wolfgang Gerhard Kunz

   University of Kaiserslautern · Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau

   Affiliation as printed

   Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau,Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische

7. Djones Vinicius Lettnin

   Infineon Technologies (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Infineon Technologies AG