Abstract
In this paper, we present EASE (Enabling hardware Assertion Synthesis from English) which translates hardware design specifications written in English to a formal assertion language. Existing natural language processing (NLP) tools for hardware verification utilize the vocabulary and grammar of a few specification documents only. Hence, they lack the ability to provide linguistic variations in parsing and writing natural language assertions. The grammar used in EASE does not follow a strict English syntax for writing design specifications. Our grammar incorporates dependency rules for syntactic categories which are coupled with semantic category dependencies that allow users to specify the same design specification using different word sequences in a sentence. Our NLP engine consists of interleaving operations of semantic and syntactic analyses to understand the input sentences and map differently worded sentences with the same meaning to the same logical form. Moreover, our approach also provides semantically driven suggestions for sentences that are not understood by the system. EASE has been tested on natural language requirements extracted from memory controller, UART and AMBA AXI protocol specification documents. The system has been tested for imperative, declarative and conditional types of specifications. The results show that the proposed approach can handle a more diverse set of linguistic variations than existing methods.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ray, S., Harris, I.G., Fey, G., Soeken, M.: Multilevel design understanding: from specification to logic. In: 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), pp. 1–6. IEEE (2016)
Soeken, M., Harris, C.B., Abdessaied, N., Harris, I.G., Drechsler, R.: Automating the translation of assertions using natural language processing techniques. In: Proceedings of the 2014 Forum on Specification and Design Languages (FDL), Munich, pp. 1–8 (2014)
Ghosh, S., Elenius, D., Li, W., Lincoln, P., Shankar, N., Steiner, W.: ARSENAL: automatic requirements specification extraction from natural language. In: Rayadurgam, S., Tkachuk, O. (eds.) NFM 2016. LNCS, vol. 9690, pp. 41–46. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40648-0_4
Harris, I.G.: Capturing assertions from natural language descriptions. In: 2013 1st International Workshop on Natural Language Analysis in Software Engineering (NaturaLiSE), pp. 17–24. IEEE (2013)
Harris, C.B., Harris, I.G.: Generating formal hardware verification properties from natural language documentation. In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC), pp. 49–56. IEEE (2015)
Harris, C.B., Harris, I.G.: Glast: learning formal grammars to translate natural language specifications into hardware assertions. In: Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE), pp. 966–971. IEEE (2016)
Chen, W., Ray, S., Bhadra, J., Abadir, M., Wang, L.C.: Challenges and trends in modern SoC design verification. IEEE Des. Test 34(5), 7–22 (2017)
Kamsties, E., Berry, D.M., Paech, B.: Detecting ambiguities in requirements documents using inspections. In: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Inspection in Software Engineering (WISE01), pp. 68–80 (2001)
Berry, D.M.: Ambiguity in natural language requirements documents. In: Paech, B., Martell, C. (eds.) Monterey Workshop 2007. LNCS, vol. 5320, pp. 1–7. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89778-1_1
Hsiao, M.S.: Automated program synthesis from object-oriented natural language for computer games. In: The International Workshop on Controlled Natural Language, August 2018
Krishnamurthy, R., Hsiao, M.S.: Controlled natural language framework for generating assertions from hardware specifications. In: 2019 IEEE 13th International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC), pp. 367–370. IEEE (2019)
Nivre, J.: Dependency grammar and dependency parsing. MSI report 5133, no. 1959, pp. 1–32 (2005)
Nivre, J.: An efficient algorithm for projective dependency parsing. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies (IWPT) (2003)
Kuhn, T., Schwitter, R.: Writing support for controlled natural languages. In: Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Association Workshop 2008, pp. 46–54 (2008)
Gorban, J.: UART IP core specification. Architecture 15, 1 (2002)
Micron SDR SRAM. https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/data-sheet/dram/512mb_sdr.pdf
Vijayaraghavan, S., Meyyappan, R.: A Practical Guide for SystemVerilog Assertions. Springer, New York (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/b137011
AMBA 3 AXI Protocol Checker User Guide, r0p1 ed., ARM, June 2009
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Krishnamurthy, R., Hsiao, M.S. (2019). EASE: Enabling Hardware Assertion Synthesis from English. In: Fodor, P., Montali, M., Calvanese, D., Roman, D. (eds) Rules and Reasoning. RuleML+RR 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11784. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31095-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31095-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31094-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31095-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)