The emergence of formal methods in a microprocessor company

Operations research, Management science : OR MS; the international literature digest. – Davenport, Iowa : Executive Sciences Institute, ISSN 0030-3658, ZDB-ID 207381x. – Vol. 36.1996, 4, p. 443-446

This article looks at the company diffusion and implementation of formal-methods technology. In 1990, the prestigious British Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement was given to the semiconductor company, Inmos, and to Oxford University Computing Laboratory, for their innovative development and use of formal methods on the verification of the T800 transputer. The award seemed to symbolize the definite establishment of formal methods within the Inmos design process. This article looks at the human story behind the news. Was the emergence of formal methods within Inmos’s design process such a happy event as the news seemed to imply? Did formal methods really gain an unquestionable place within the company’s design process? This article contains a brief review of relevant factors influencing the present general development of formal methods, and an analysis of the experience of the…