SHF: Small: Exploring Swarm Intelligence for Design Validation

随着设计尺寸的增加，隐藏的、微妙的bug的可能性也在增加，为了暴露这些微妙的bug，在大型电路和系统中找到角落案例已经成为一项艰巨的任务。验证设计的正确性现在是整个设计过程中的一个巨大瓶颈。刺激产生的有效性的关键是在搜索过程中提供的指导和反馈的质量。本研究的目的是引出蜂群能力来解决这一难题，这是过去没有做过的。在搜索过程中获得的个人知识被提取出来，以使集体努力受益。这是通过培养知识交流、积累和利用来实现的。通过对状态变量的智能划分和分组，可以在大型设计中构造许多有效的抽象导航轨迹，有利于群体平台。新理论和算法的发展将是一个原创性的贡献，它将允许对半形式验证和状态空间探索的变革性理解，所有这些都在一个严格的框架内。这项工作将产生的理论和实践不仅使我们对集体努力有更深的了解，而且这个项目将直接促进参与其中的学生的教育。关于向代表性不足的学生伸出援手，PI目前建议多名女性博士生（工程领域代表性不足），该项目将继续鼓励有抱负的女学生参与研究工作。此外，PI将积极从弗吉尼亚理工大学的项目中招募暑期少数族裔实习生参与该项目。

The likelihood of hidden, subtle bugs increases with growing design sizes, and reaching corner cases in large circuits and systems in order to expose such subtle bugs has become a daunting task. Verifying the correctness of the design is now a tremendous bottleneck in the overall design process. Critical to the effectiveness of stimuli generation is the quality of guidance and feedback provided during the search. The objective of this research is to elicit the swarming power to solve this very difficult problem, which has not been done in the past. Individual knowledge acquired during the search is extracted to benefit collective effort. This is enabled via cultivation of knowledge exchange, accumulation, and utilization. The intelligent partitioning and grouping of the state variables allows for the construction of many effective abstract navigation tracks in large designs, benefiting the swarm platform. The development of new theories and algorithms will be an original contribution that will allow for transformative understanding of semi-formal verification and state space exploration, all in a rigorous framework. The theories and practice that will result from this work will not only enable us for a deeper understanding of collective effort, this project will directly promote the education of the involved students. In regard to outreach to under-represented students, the PI currently advises multiple women Ph.D. students (under-represented in engineering), and this project will continue to encourage aspiring female students to participate in the research endeavor. In addition, the PI will actively recruit summer minority interns from programs within Virginia Tech to take part in this project.