Automatic production of controller specifications from control and timing behavioral descriptions

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a method for the generation of controller specifications from high-level behavioral descriptions in control and timing graph form. Input descriptions may contain multiple timing constraints, asynchronous and synchronous inputs, data dependent internal loops, and parallel and conditional branches. The timing graph model is transformed automatically to a state table specification of a synchronous finite state machine. The specification method is effective not only for independent data processors, but also for processors constrained by interface requirements and performing I/O protocol translation. The method has been programmed and tested on selected examples. Results from one example are given along with a comparison with results on the same example from another system.

REFERENCES

• 1: E. Girczyc and J. Knight. An ada to standard cell hardware compiler based on graph grammars and scheduling. In Proceedings, 1984 International Corferenee on Computer Design - ICCD, pages 726-729, October 1984.
• 2: J. Nestor and D. Thomas. Behavioral Syuthesis with Interfaces. In IEEE international Conference on CAD, November 1986.
• 3: G. Borriello and R. Katz. Synthesizing Transducers from Interface Specifications. In International Conferer~ce on VLSI, August 1987.
• 4: S. Hayati, A. Parker, and J. Granackl. Representation of control and timing behavior with applications to interface synthesis. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Design, 1988.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.1 CONTROL STRUCTURES AND MICROPROGRAMMING
      B.1.2 Control Structure Performance Analysis and Design Aids
          Subjects: Automatic synthesis**

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.5 REGISTER-TRANSFER-LEVEL IMPLEMENTATION
      B.5.1 Design
          Subjects: Control design
      B.5.2 Design Aids
          Subjects: Automatic synthesis

  F. Theory of Computation
  F.2 ANALYSIS OF ALGORITHMS AND PROBLEM COMPLEXITY
      F.2.2 Nonnumerical Algorithms and Problems
          Subjects: Sorting and searching

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Performance, Theory