Fixed-Scope Hardware Review Compression

Your tape-out is in three weeks. The third-party RTL hasn't been properly reviewed.

Ark Axiom helps engineering teams reduce review scope before formal verification, signoff, DRC/ERC, and manufacturing workflows begin. We deliver fixed-scope RTL and PCB review-compression engagements with replayable evidence packets, ranked review targets, and deterministic provenance.

Used for: third-party RTL intake · AI-generated RTL review · late-stage PCB revisions · vendor IP evaluation

5 BUSINESS DAYS NDA NO ACTIONABLE TRIAGE, NO FEE service first. productized later.
review-compression-engagement.log
# evaluator-supplied artifacts reference/* ↔ candidate/* rtl_triage cone isolation + review ranking pcb_triage affected nets + visual regions historical repair replay + baseline evidence MD / JSON / HTML / SHA turnaround 5 business days # deliverable ranked review targets top-3 repair overlap: 12/13 median compression: 349x* provenance manifest BOUNDARY review compression only, not signoff if no actionable triage: fee waived artifact_hash: 69fac8b3a2d1... *Median review-compression ratio measures the reduction from candidate review surface to ranked review targets.

Runs alongside existing review workflows. No EDA replacement. No signoff changes. No workflow disruption.

Reduce review effort before verification begins.

349x
Median Review Compression
Median review-compression ratio measures the reduction from candidate review surface to ranked review targets.
12 / 13
Top-3 Exact-Signal Overlap
Ranked targets matched the exact signal modified in the fix.
15
Public Repair Cases
Public repair cases across Ibex, CVA6, and OpenTitan.
Boundary Check: Retrospective repair-region overlap only. Not bug detection. Not signoff. Repaired-region overlap is a triage relevance metric, not correctness proof.

Hardware Review Compression for Engineering Teams

Ark Axiom is a Hardware Review Compression company.

Client RTL
Ark Review Compression
Senior Review
Formal Verification
Signoff
Ark reduces review scope before expensive verification and manufacturing workflows begin.

Third-party IP intake

Reduce review effort on unfamiliar vendor RTL.

AI-generated RTL

Focus senior engineers on the highest-impact review targets.

PCB revisions

Reduce board-review effort before manufacturing review begins.

01

Submit Artifacts

Send a bounded reference/candidate RTL pair, PCB/BOM revision pair, or sanitized third-party IP intake target under NDA.

RTL · KiCad/BOM · Sanitized Inputs
02

Run Triage

Ark compresses the review surface into:

  • Ranked RTL review targets
  • Affected logic cones
  • Changed board regions
  • Evidence packets
  • Replayable provenance
RTL Review Witness · PCB Revision Witness · Review Compression Packet
03

Receive Packet

Within 5 business days, receive a bounded evidence packet: ranked targets, cone or board-region notes, MD/JSON/HTML outputs, manifests, and claim boundaries.

Review Compression Packet · SHA Manifest · Review Handoff

Hardware teams need review compression before signoff work begins.

Third-party IP intake, open-source RTL reuse, AI-generated hardware, PCB revision churn, and supply-chain pressure are increasing the amount of hardware evidence teams must inspect before expensive verification, inspection, or manufacturing workflows.

01

Evidence expectations are increasing.

Security, functional-safety, customer, and regulatory review processes are asking for better hardware evidence, including EU Cyber Resilience Act reporting obligations beginning in September 2026.

02

Third-party hardware intake is accelerating.

Teams need a practical way to triage unfamiliar RTL or changed board artifacts before full formal campaigns, DFM/DRC/ERC, inspection, STA, or integration work.

03

A diff is not a review answer.

Reviewers need affected cones, changed nets, physical regions, signal impact, and replayable artifacts, not only changed lines or BOM rows.

04

Evidence must survive handoff.

Review artifacts need hashes, manifests, commands, and bounded claims so external evaluators can reproduce the result.

Service first: send artifacts, receive a bounded Review Compression Packet.

RTL Review Witness and PCB Revision Witness turn changed or unfamiliar hardware artifacts into bounded review targets: affected cones, suspicious signals, changed nets, board regions, warning classifications, provenance manifests, and replayable evidence packets.

This is a localized review-compression engagement, not a software deployment and not signoff. The output helps your engineers decide what deserves deeper review.

Input
Reference / Candidate
A bounded RTL or PCB/BOM pair establishes the review boundary under NDA.
Ark
Review Compression Workflow
Review ranking, cone isolation, localized escalation, visual diffing, and provenance capture localize the review surface.
Output
Review Compression Packet
The output is a bounded handoff: what changed, where it matters, and what needs human review.
Cone / Region Summary
Review Priority
Manifest
Replay Hash

Example evidence artifact

RTL Review Witness Artifact — RRW-0041 ● REVIEW
case_id RRW-0041 file breaker.v cone_size 14 signals check SAT_MITER status DIVERGENCE_CONFIRMED # review state liquidity=0 threshold=0 reference: trip=0 candidate: trip=1 artifact_hash: 69fac8b3a2d1... boundary: localized review artifact, not signoff

RTL review surface

Reference/candidate pair
Affected cone
Signal impact
Review handoff chain
Mutation class
SAT result
Warning register
Artifact hash
Replay command
Claim boundary

Service deliverables

RTL Review Witness

RTL Review Packet

Suspicious signal ranking, cone summaries, localized SAT escalation where available, warning classifications, and replayable MD/JSON/HTML/SHA artifacts.

PCB Revision Witness

PCB Revision Packet

Ranked visual diff, affected nets and board regions, BOM/component deltas, SVG/HTML overlay, evidence reasons, and provenance hashes.

Review Compression Packet

Command Center View

Optional evidence navigation layer for manifests, warning registers, evidence summaries, artifact hashes, review queues, and claim boundaries.

Guarantee

No Actionable Triage, No Fee

If the workflow does not produce at least one replayable review artifact — such as a localized suspicious cone, ranked review-priority target, affected board region, vacuity-risk classification, formal escalation candidate, or equivalence/no-material-drift evidence packet — the evaluation fee is waived.

Timeline

5 Business Days

Bounded engagements are scoped up front by file count, artifact type, and review questions before the timer starts.

Boundary

Not Signoff

Ark does not replace formal verification, LEC, DRC/ERC, electrical validation, inspection, certification, or production board/chip signoff.

Evaluation entry

Send a bounded RTL or PCB/BOM artifact set under NDA. Receive review targets, replayable evidence, warning status, and artifact hashes.

Request Evaluation →
"A diff is not a review answer."
Reviewers need affected cones and signal impact, not only changed lines.

What you receive after a bounded review-compression engagement.

The deliverable is not an installed platform. It is a review-compression packet your engineering team can inspect, share internally, and compare against the scoped evidence.

RTL Review Witness supports RTL semantic drift detection, Yosys-assisted netlist comparison, suspicious cone isolation, localized SAT escalation where available, mutation validation, PCB/BOM revision review, visual board-region overlays, and SHA-256 manifests. Command Center organizes the Review Compression Packet when a dashboard view is useful.

RTL Review Witness Packet
Suspicious signals, cone summaries, local checks, warnings, replay outputs
PCB Revision Witness Packet
Affected nets, board regions, BOM deltas, SVG/HTML visual diff
Provenance Manifests
SHA-256 evidence chains for evaluated inputs and outputs
Review Memo
What was found, what was not checked, and what still needs human review
Command Center View
Optional evidence navigation across replay, provenance, manifests, and limitations
RTL Divergence Review — Review Compression Packet ● BOUNDED
# cone isolation run artifact_id rcp-0xf4c2 cone_scope localized sat_strategy localized_miter # suspicious region diff cone_0x2a: breaker_trip diverges state liquidity=0 threshold=0 reachable # triage verdict CONFIRM cone_0x2a → behavioral divergence PACKAGE manifest + replay command + cone notes # evidence packet manifest_hash a91bc3d7... sat_proof_ref localized-miter-v1 artifact scope: review evidence, not signoff
Engagement model

NDA required. Sanitized artifacts accepted. Fixed-scope bounded evaluation engagements. Pricing depends on artifact scope, turnaround constraints, and workflow depth. Standard turnaround is 5 business days after intake. If the workflow does not produce at least one replayable review artifact, the evaluation fee is waived.

Request Evaluation →
"Triage is not verification."
Ark isolates review priority targets; it does not claim correctness or formal signoff.

Sample artifacts show the service output before you send files.

The public packets demonstrate the shape of the deliverable: controlled mutations, public historical repair replay, localized divergence cases, PCB visual drift, manifests, and replayable artifacts. Customer-owned artifacts are evaluated only under NDA.

IP-01

PicoRV32 Mutation Validation

Controlled CPU-core mutations used to test whether the workflow localizes behavior-changing RTL edits and produces bounded review evidence.

IP-02

AXI Ready-Gate Bypass

Handshake and ready/valid mutation cases used to validate cone isolation, evidence summaries, and human-readable divergence notes.

IP-03

Historical Repair Replay

Fifteen public Ibex, CVA6, and OpenTitan repair cases used to test whether ranked review targets overlap eventual repair regions, with random baseline and blind-structural checks.

Additional validation artifacts and evaluator packets available under NDA.  ·  Email for NDA evaluation →

Replayable evidence for hardware review.

Behavioral divergence needs evidence.

A changed line or BOM row is only the start. Reviewers need to know which signal, net, cone, or board region deserves deeper inspection.

Verification triage must be reconstructable.

Evidence outputs are designed for replay: the same scoped artifacts, command, constraints, and hashes should reconstruct the same triage result.

Review compression is the product.

The goal is not to replace formal verification, DRC/ERC, or inspection. It is to compress the review problem into bounded, named targets that engineers can inspect.

Evidence artifacts produced

Every review-compression engagement produces artifacts designed to survive handoff: reviewable by another engineer, auditable by a compliance team, and reproducible against the original scoped inputs.

Manifests
Artifact provenance chains.
Cone summaries and source hashes.
Replay Hashes
Hash-anchored.
Replayable. Reviewer-grade.
SAT Proofs
Bounded formal evidence.
Localized cone scope.
Bounded Contracts
Assumptions and boundaries.
Versioned. Deterministic.
Replay Evidence
Command replay reports.
Divergence reconstruction.
Warning Registers
Classified warnings.
Fixed / bounded / pending.
Evaluation scope
RTL reviewCone notes, SAT miters, mutation traces IP intakeThird-party RTL review and evaluator packets PCB reviewBoard/BOM drift, affected nets, visual overlays Ops layerCommand Center manifests and replay lineage

Engineering notes & validation briefs.

Technical notes on RTL divergence review, historical repair replay, PCB structural-drift triage, localized formal escalation, mutation validation, hardware provenance, and reproducible evidence workflows.

Open Review Compression Packet →

A Diff Is Not a Behavioral Review

Why line-level RTL diffs miss downstream behavior, reachable states, and cone-localized review targets.

Open evidence memo →

Localized SAT Escalation: Bounded Formal Evidence Without Global Solvers

An engineering walkthrough of cone-scoped SAT evidence, how localized escalation reduces review overhead, and what an evaluation packet contains.

Open formal exhibit →

Public RTL Repair Replay as Triage Evidence

How retrospective repair-region overlap, random baselines, and blind-structural checks test whether Ark concentrates reviewer attention near historically repaired RTL.

Open replay report →

Visual Structural-Drift Triage for Board/BOM Review

PCB Revision Witness converts board and BOM drift into ranked visual review targets with affected nets, physical regions, evidence reasons, and replayable provenance.

Open visual diff →
Technical brief contents

What the brief covers

RTL Review Witness packet: evidence memo, paid evaluation scope, review checklist, historical repair-replay reports, review-compression reports, evidence summaries, and SHA manifest lineage. PCB Revision Witness adds a visual companion packet for board/BOM drift review.

Review entry point

What to bring

Review Compression packet: evidence index, known limitations, evidence summaries, manifest lineage, provenance summaries, historical repair replay, and review-compression reports across hardware review artifacts.

Sample packets show the deliverable format.

These public packets are examples of what a bounded review-compression engagement returns: reviewable evidence artifacts, manifests, limitations, replay summaries, and visual review outputs. They are sample evaluation packets, not production signoff evidence.

RTL

RTL Review Witness Packet

README-first flow, evidence memo, review checklist, historical repair-replay report, review-priority report, evidence summary, and packet manifest.

Open packet →

PCB

PCB Revision Witness Packet

Visual companion track for board-level supply-chain review: structural-drift report, review-priority queue, linked SVG/HTML visual diff, affected nets, board-region summaries, BOM/component deltas, and SHA manifest.

Open packet →

CC

Review Compression Packet

Evidence-ops summary: evidence index, known limitations, manifest lineage, provenance summary, historical repair replay, and review-compression metrics.

Open packet →

EVID

Evidence Handoff Summary

Public packets include sample outputs, evidence reports, manifests, limitations, and provenance summaries. Additional technical implementation details are available during partner evaluation.

Open evidence memo →

Boundary: packets are review-compression and evidence-operations artifacts. They do not claim complete Trojan detection, final verification closure, whole-chip correctness, board correctness, or production signoff.  ·  Open Evidence Summary →  ·  Request Evaluation →

Send a bounded artifact set. Get a review-compression packet in 5 business days.

Bring a sanitized RTL reference/candidate pair, third-party IP intake target, controlled mutation case, or PCB/BOM revision pair. We return bounded review targets, cone notes or visual regions, warning status, evidence summaries, and artifact hashes. No actionable triage, no evaluation fee.

Currently accepting first bounded evaluation engagements. NDA and scope agreement required before intake.