July 10, 2006 -- With innovations in technologies and methodology, the benefits of formal functional verification apply in many more areas. If we understand the characteristics of areas with high formal applicability, we can identify not only which blocks are good candidates, but also what portions or functionalities of the blocks will give the greatest return on the time and effort invested. Today, formal verification can be more valuable applied partially within blocks by choosing the functions that have the highest return. Identify high-risk areas

There are three objectives for use of formal tools: first, to accomplish what conventional methods cannot, such as proving that a particular property is always true; second, to achieve what other methods can do, but significantly faster; and, lastly, to enhance current tools and methods by providing another approach to achieve full coverage. But regardless of objective, formal's return on effort must be compelling.

Lawrence Loh. (Loh is currently the director of applications engineering at Jasper Design Automation, responsible for worldwide applications engineering and methodology development.)