Sharing electronic design data via semantic spaces

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, such as layout generators and simulators, have generally focused on algorithms and techniques for hardware design. Data management aspects have not been emphasized, but the volume of data, heterogeneity of data formats, and the evolution/proliferation of tools have made data modeling and data interchange increasingly important research issues. The data sharing problem stems from the fact that related EDA tools are often used in various sequences to manipulate and annotate a single design. In a typical design environment, tools use file-based data storage, with limited data modeling capabilities, and primitive or non-existent query facilities. In order to support current tools, we wish to preserve the semantics of existing hardware description languages in rigorous data models; we propose to capture each existing language in a semantic space model. We view data interchange as a query against one semantic space that produces objects, i.e., query answers, in another semantic space. We define an integrating meta-model, the meta-space, and also define general query operators for transforming objects between semantic spaces. These query operators define both the intension and extension of a query result; the transformed data is described in the type system of the meta-space, thus providing explicit semantics for the shared data. Our modeling approach supports advanced and evolving applications, such as hardware/software codesign, through the ability to retrieve data resident in individual semantic spaces, as well as to share data in semantic spaces from different EDA sources