A Rewriting Semantics for ABEL with Applications to Hardware/Software Co-Design and Analysis

Abstract

We present a rewriting logic semantics in Maude of the ABEL hardware description language. Based on this semantics, and on Maude's underlying LTL model checker, we propose a scalable formal analysis framework and tool for hardware/software co-design. The analysis method is based on trace checking of finite system behaviors against LTL temporal logic formulas. The formal properties of the hardware, the embedded software, and the interactions between both can all be analyzed this way. We present two case studies illustrating our method and tool.

The rewriting logic semantics project

“…Following a continuation-based semantics similar to the one in this paper, D'Amorim and Roşu have given a definition of the Scheme language in [23]. Other language case studies, all specified in Maude, include BC [7], CCS [70,7], CIAO [66], Creol [37], ELOTOS [68], MSR [10,64], PLAN [65,66], the ABEL hardware description language [38], SILF [36], FUN [57], and the π-calculus [67]. Some of these rewrite logic language definitions do not obey the continuation-based style advocated in this paper.…”

“…The fact that rewriting logic [40,9] provides an easy and expressive way to develop executable formal definitions of languages, which can then be subjected to different tool-supported formal analyses, is by now well established [6,70,67,65,42,68,15,58,69,27,25,37,7,44,45,12,11,26,21,59,1,66,23,60,38,36,30].…”

Maude- based design space exploration of embedded systems

“…A case study on a pipelined microprocessor was reported. The work in [4] presented rewriting logic semantics in Maude of the ABEL hardware description language. Based on this semantics and on Maude' underlying LTL model checker, a formal analysis framework for hardware/software Co-design was proposed.…”

Twenty years of rewriting logic

“…In this way, hardware designs written in an HDL can be both simulated and analyzed using the executable rewriting semantics of the HDL and tools like ELAN, CafeOBJ, or Maude. The first HDL to be given a rewriting logic semantics in Maude was ABEL [254]; this semantics was used not only for hardware designs, but also for hardware/software co-designs. An important new development has been the use of the rewriting logic semantics of an HDL for generating sophisticated test inputs for hardware designs.…”