Formal synthesis in circuit design — A classification and survey

This article gives a survey on different methods of formal synthesis. We define what we mean by the term formal synthesis and delimit it from the other formal methods that can also be used to guarantee the correctness of an implementation. A possible classification scheme for formal synthesis methods is then introduced, based on which some significant research activities are classified and summarized. We also briefly introduce our own approach towards the formal synthesis of hardware. Finally, we compare these approaches from different points of view.