# Countering the Path Explosion Problem in the Symbolic Execution of Hardware Designs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05445 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05445/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [AutoEG: Exploiting Known Third-Party Vulnerabilities in Black-Box Web Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00704/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Symbolic execution is a powerful verification tool for hardware designs, but suffers from the path explosion problem. We introduce a new approach, piecewise composition, which leverages the modular structure of hardware to transfer the work of path exploration to SMT solvers. We present a symbolic execution engine implementing the technique. The engine operates directly over register transfer level (RTL) Verilog designs without requiring translation to a netlist or software simulation. In our evaluation, piecewise composition reduces the number of paths explored by an order of magnitude and reduces the runtime by 97%. Using 84 properties from the literature we find assertion violations in 5 open-source designs including an SoC and CPU.