[Pl-seminar] Jonathan Bowen @ COE 4/17: Talk on formal semantics of Verilog

[Mitchell Wand]

Wednesday April 17 at 3pm in 406 Egan

Title:

The Operational Semantics and Animation of the VERILOG Hardware Description
Language

Speaker:

Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen, South Bank University, London, UK
www.jpbowen.com

Abstract:

The VERILOG Hardware Description Language (HDL) is widely used in
industry, despite the fact that the semantics is only informally
defined as an IEEE standard. This talk presents a formalization of the
key aspects of VERILOG using an operational semantics approach. The
semantics have been formulated using the logic programming language
Prolog. This allows the possibility of animating VERILOG programs
directly from the semantic description. Using this approach enables
the exploration of sometimes subtle behaviours of parallel programs
and the possibility of rapid changes or additions to the semantics of
the language covered. It also acts as a check on the validity of the
operational semantics.

[No specialist knowledge of formal semantics will be
assumed. Knowledge of a Hardware Description Language would be
helpful.]