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

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.