MAHA: A Program for Datapath Synthesis

Abstract

MAHA is a program which implements an algorithm for register level synthesis of data paths from a data flow specification. The algorithm is based on a linear hardware assignment to critical path nodes, followed by a cost-based assignment using the concept of the freedom of a node to be scheduled. Functions with the least scheduling freedom are scheduled first. The program either minimizes cost, subject to a time constraint, or maximizes speed subject to a cost constraint. The implementation of this algorithm is presented using examples from the literature. MAHA is written in Franz LISP, and executes within minutes for problems of practical size on a VAX 11/780.