Eecient Simulation of Formal Processor Models

Computer systems under development are routinely modeled by sim-ulators, and formal veriication can be integrated into conventional computer system development by reasoning directly about such simulators. However, simulators must be extremely fast to be usable in a real development eeort. We have crafted a model for a simple processor in the logic of the ACL2 theorem prover that supports both formal analysis and eecient execution, with performance near that of a simulator written in C. We describe our approach using the simple model and indicate how we are applying it to our latest microprocessor.

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