US 2026/0300592 A1Published application

Logical time division multiplexing of digital logic designs

AssigneesVeriSilicon Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., VeriSilicon Holdings Co., Ltd.

InventorJen-Te Lee

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Abstract

N instances of a design including stateless combinational logic and data storage, e.g., flip-flops, are replaced with a logically time-division multiplexed (TDM) design including a single instance of the combinational logic and N instances of the data storage chained together such that for all but the first instance, an instance will receive the output of a preceding instance. The N instances of the data storage are driven by a sub-divided clock that generates N clock cycles for each clock cycle of an external clock. The output of the last instance is input to the combinational logic and the first instance receives an output of the combinational logic. A bridging circuit serializes input data and deserializes the outputs of the combinational logic for each clock cycle of the sub-divided clock. A single RAM instance of the design may likewise be modified for use in the TDM design.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method comprising:

receiving, by a computer system, an original design comprising:
combinational logic having external interface inputs, external interface outputs, state interface inputs, and state interface outputs, the combinational logic being stateless;
and
data storage having state outputs coupled to the state interface inputs, state inputs coupled to the state interface outputs, and a clock input, the data storage configured to store a plurality of states and output the plurality of states on the state outputs, the data storage further configured to set the plurality of states according to values on the state inputs for each clock cycle received on the clock input;
and
generating, by the computer system, a time-division multiplexed (TDM) design based on the original design, the TDM design including:
a single instance of the combinational logic;
a chain of instances of the data storage configured such that:
a first instance of the chain of instances has the state inputs thereof coupled to the state interface outputs of the single instance of the combinational logic;
a last instance of the chain of instances has the state outputs thereof coupled to the state interface inputs of the single instance of the combinational logic;
and
all instances of the chain of instances other than the first instance have the state inputs thereof coupled to the state outputs of a preceding instance of the chain of instances.

9 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable code that, when executed by one or more processing devices, causes the one or more processing devices to:

receive an original design comprising:
combinational logic having external interface inputs, external interface outputs, state interface inputs, and state interface outputs, the combinational logic being stateless;
and
data storage having state outputs coupled to the state interface inputs, state inputs coupled to the state interface outputs, and a clock input, the data storage configured to store a plurality of states and output the plurality of states on the state outputs, the data storage further configured to set the plurality of states according to values on the state inputs for each clock cycle received on the clock input;
and
generate a time-division multiplexed (TDM) design based on the original design, the TDM design including:
a single instance of the combinational logic;
a chain of instances of the data storage configured such that:
a first instance of the chain of instances has the state inputs thereof coupled to the state interface outputs of the single instance of the combinational logic;
a last instance of the chain of instances has the state outputs thereof coupled to the state interface inputs of the single instance of the combinational logic;
and
all instances of the chain of instances other than the first instance have the state inputs thereof coupled to the state outputs of a preceding instance of the chain of instances.

9 more elements

An apparatus comprising:

combinational logic having external interface inputs, external interface outputs, state interface inputs, and state interface outputs, the combinational logic being stateless;
and
a chain of instances of data storage, each instance of the data storage:
having state outputs coupled to the state interface inputs, state inputs coupled to the state interface outputs, and a clock input;
being configured to store a plurality of states and output the plurality of states on the state outputs;
and
being configured to set the plurality of states according to values on the state inputs for each clock cycle received on the clock input;
and
wherein the chain of instances of the data storage is configured such that:
a first instance of the chain of instances has the state inputs thereof coupled to the state interface outputs of the combinational logic;
a last instance of the chain of instances has the state outputs thereof coupled to the state interface inputs of the combinational logic;
and
all instances of the chain of instances other than the first instance have the state inputs thereof coupled to the state outputs of a preceding instance of the chain of instances.

10 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.