Emerald: A Bus Style Designer

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a design generator. The design generator takes a behavioral description as its input and generates functional level structures as its output. Designs for two behavioral descriptions are compared with commercial designs. On the average, the total number of gates required for the allocated data paths is 15 percent more than the commercial designs. Mechanisms for exploring alternative designs are provided. The design space for one of the examples is extensively investigated. Limitations of automated design are also discussed.