Stimuli generation for functional hardware verification with constraint programming

Abstract

We survey the application of constraint programming techniques for stimuli generation in functional hardware verification, which can be considered the largest and most important industrial application of constraint programming. We provide a thorough introduction to the application domain, aimed at people unfamiliar with this area. We show the sources of constraints and the unique aspects of the constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) arising in this field. We then present CSP models of a wide variety of stimuli generation problems, as well as the state of the art techniques used to solve them. We also discuss the current challenges in this area, and the prospects of solving them by advancing constraint programming technology beyond the state of the art.