The use of contract specifications for representing requirements and for functional testing of hardware models

Contract specifications in the form of pre-and postconditions are widely used in software engineering for formal description of interfaces of software components. On the one hand, such specifications are convenient for the developers since they can easily be attached to the system architecture. On the other hand, test oracles verifying conformance of the behavior of the target system to the specifications can automatically be generated from them. In the paper, it is suggested to use contract specifications for representing requirements and for functional testing of hardware models developed in languages such as VHDL, Verilog, SystemC, System Verilog, etc. An approach to specification of such systems is proposed and compared with the existing methods of hardware specification. An experience of its practical use is described. The approach is based on the UniTESK testing technology developed at the Institute for System Programming.