A new approach for initialization sequences computation for synchronous sequential circuits

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to the automated generation of an initialization sequence for synchronous sequential circuits. Finding an initialization sequence is a hard task when a global reset signal is not available, and functional techniques often cannot handle large circuits. We propose a Genetic Algorithm providing a sequence that aims at initializing the highest number of flip flops with the lowest number of vectors. The experimental results we provide shore that the approach is feasible to be applied even to the largest benchmark circuits and that it compares well to other known approaches in terms of initialized flip flops and sequence length.