Representation and symbolic manipulation of linearly inductive Boolean functions

We consider a class of practically useful Boolean functions, called linearly inductive functions (LIFs), and present a canonical representation as well as algorithms for their automatic symbolic manipulation. LIFs can be used to capture structural induction in parameterized circuit descriptions, whereby our LIF representation provides a fixed-sized representation for all size instances of a circuit. Furthermore, since LIFs can naturally capture the temporal induction inherent in sequential system descriptions, our representation also provides a canonical form for sequential functions. This allows for a wide range of applications of symbolic LIF manipulation in the verification and synthesis of digital systems. We also present practical results from a preliminary implementation of a general purpose LIF package.