Integrating design and verification environments through a logic supporting hardware diagrams

Formal methods and verification tools are difficult for designers to use. Research has been concentrated on handling large proofs; meanwhile, insufficient attention has been paid to the reasoning process. We argue that a heterogeneous logic supporting hardware diagrams and sentential logic provides a natural framework for reasoning and for the formal integration of design and verification environments. We present such a logic and demonstrate its flexibility on fragments of a traffic light controller design and verification problem.