The semantic challenge of Verilog HDL

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Abstract

The Verilog hardware description language (HDL) is widely used to model the structure and behaviour of digital systems ranging from simple hardware building blocks to complete systems. Its semantics is based an the scheduling of events and the propagation of changes. Different Verilog models of the same device are used during the design process and it is important that these be 'equivalent'; formal methods for ensuring this could be commercially significant. Unfortunately, there is very little theory available to help. This self-contained tutorial paper explains the semantics of Verilog informally and poses a number of logical and semantic problems that are intended to provoke further research. Any theory developed to support Verilog is likely to be useful for the analysis of the similar (but more complex) language VHDL.