Bridging Hardware and Software Analysis

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Dirk Beyer; Nian-Ze Lee, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Software Engineering and Programming Languages ; Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536040111

Our society and economy rely on correct computing systems, which consist of hardware and software components, and analyzing computing systems is indispensable to ensure their correct functionality. Formal verification is adopted by more and more users, including the leading technology companies, to guarantee the correctness of their systems with mathematical rigorousness. There are separate research communities for hardware and software, which develop their own techniques and tools, respectively. Such distinction creates a gap in knowledge and hinders one community from enjoying the advancements of the other. Due to this gap, the potential of leveraging techniques developed in related areas to improve the state of the art may be overlooked. We propose to invent technologies to close the gap and make knowledge and scientific results from the hardware area applicable in the software area and vice versa. The three objectives of our proposal are to: (1) optimize the applicability of software analyzers to hardware designs, (2) construct a framework that facilitates the utilization of off-the-shelf hardware analyzers for software, and (3) combine knowledge for hardware and software to solve practical problems. Our methods comprise transformation and information exchange, combination of tools, extensive experiments for performance benchmarking, and case studies. All our software and data will be made publicly available.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Alan Mishchenko, Ph.D.