Formal CAD Techniques for Safety-Critical FPGA Design and Deployment in Embedded Subsystems

In this short paper we describe the formal specification of interface chips which are used in embedded subsystems. The typical applications come from the areas of mission critical systems which are most commonly found in the avionics and space industries. Our application, by which we illustrate our formal techniques for the design of an embedded FPGA controller is that of an ABS (anti-lock braking system) as used by the automotive industry. We describe our innovative technological approach for ASIC design and show that it may equally well be applied to the area of FPGA design which are more cost-effective for small production runs or where the system specification may need to be changed at short notice.