Method of graphically designing circuits
AssigneeVLSI Technology, Inc.
InventorJames A. Rowson
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention relates to methods for designing circuits using graphical representations of control and data flow paths. Such representations afford a circuit designer an opportunity early in the design phase to view the data flow and control flow of a proposed circuit layout. Further, such representations are relatively easy to automatically scan, analyze and reduce into a set of logical notations suitable for input to known, standard logic synthesizers.
Claims16
A method of designing a circuit comprising the steps of:
- graphically representing both control flow and data flow of the circuit using control primitives and data oriented primitives, said control primitives being indicative of circuit state transitions and said data oriented primitives being indicative of selected datapath elements as affected by said circuit state transitions, such that functional and structural elements of the circuit representation are intermixed;
- recursively analyzing said graphical representation to produce a textual representation of said circuit, said textual representation being suitable for synthesizing a logic design of the circuit.
A method of designing and implementing a circuit layout comprising the steps of:
- drawing the circuit layout graphically using control primitives and data oriented primitives, said control primitives being indicative of circuit state transitions and said data oriented primitives being indicative of selected datapath elements as affected by said circuit state transitions, such that functional and structural elements of the circuit representation are intermixed;
- labelling at least some of said control primitives in said drawing with first logic expressions;
- recursively analyzing said labelled drawing automatically to derive a set o logic expressions indicative of control flow and data flow in the circuit layout;
- and
- inputting said set of logic expressions to a logic synthesizer for implementing said circuit layout.
A method of designing a circuit comprising the steps of:
- graphically illustrating both control flow and data flow of the circuit using control primitives and data oriented primitives, at least some of which are connected to form control paths and data paths, said control primitives being indicative of circuit state transitions and said data oriented primitives being indicative of selected datapath elements as affected by said circuit state transitions, such that functional and structural elements of the circuit representation are intermixed;
- and,
- labelling at least some of said control primitives with logical expressions to establish conditions associated with activation of said control paths and said data paths.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.