Using Bottom-Up Design Techniques in the Synthesis of Digital Hardware from Abstract Behavioral Descriptions

TLDR

Traditional top‑down synthesis techniques differ from the proposed method in two key ways. The paper introduces a bottom‑up design method that uses synthesis information from abstract behavioral descriptions to create integrated circuits. The method uses a procedural database to gather detailed physical and logical properties of available primitives and a novel knowledge representation that enables estimates of physical placement and wiring at the register‑transfer level. This approach yields more accurate evaluation of register‑transfer designs without full logic‑ or transistor‑level layout and provides a systematic way to explore design space to meet objectives and constraints.

Abstract

This paper reports on a new method for using bottom-up design information in the synthesis of integrated circuits from abstract behavioral descriptions. There are two important ways in which this method differs from traditional top-down synthesis techniques. First, it draws on a newly developed procedural database to collect detailed information on the physical and logical properties of the primitives available for building the design. Second, it uses a different method for representing and organizing knowledge about a design that makes possible estimates of physical placement and wiring in the analysis of that design, even at the abstract register-transfer level. This allows a more accurate evaluation of candidate register-transfer designs without doing a full logic-level or transistor-level layout. It also leads to a simple method for systematically exploring the space of possible designs in order to find the one that best meets the designer's objectives and constraints.