This book is jointly authored by leading academic and industry researchers. The material is unique in that it spans IC interconnect topics ranging from IBM's revolutionary copper process to an in-depth exploration into interconnect-aware computer architectures.

Standardization of hardware description languages and the availability of synthesis tools has brought about a remarkable increase in the productivity of hardware designers. Yet design verification methods and tools lag behind and have difficulty in dealing with the increasing design complexity. This may get worse because more complex systems are now constructed by (re)using Intellectual Property blocks developed by third parties. To verify such designs, abstract models of the blocks and the system must be developed, with separate concerns, such as interface communication, functionality, and timing, that can be verified in an almost independent fashion. Standard Hardware Description Languages such as VHDL and Verilog are inspired by procedural `imperative' programming languages in which function and timing are inherently intertwined in the statements of the language. Furthermore, they are not conceived to state the intent of the design in a simple declarative way that contains provisions for design choices, for stating assumptions on the environment, and for indicating uncertainty in system timing. Hierarchical Annotated Action Diagrams: An Interface-Oriented Specification and Verification Method presents a description methodology that was inspired by Timing Diagrams and Process Algebras, the so-called Hierarchical Annotated Diagrams. It is suitable for specifying systems with complex interface behaviors that govern the global system behavior. A HADD specification can be converted into a behavioral real-time model in VHDL and used to verify the surrounding logic, such as interface transducers. Also, function can be conservatively abstracted away and the interactions between interconnected devices can be verified using Constraint Logic Programming based on Relational Interval Arithmetic. Hierarchical Annotated Action Diagrams: An Interface-Oriented Specification and Verification Method is of interest to readers who are involved in defining methods and tools for system-level design specification and verification. The techniques for interface compatibility verification can be used by practicing designers, without any more sophisticated tool than a calculator.

High Speed CMOS Design Styles is written for the graduate-level student or practicing engineer who is primarily interested in circuit design. It is intended to provide practical reference, or `horse-sense', to mechanisms typically described with a more academic slant. This book is organized so that it can be used as a textbook or as a reference book. High Speed CMOS Design Styles provides a survey of design styles in use in industry, specifically in the high speed microprocessor design community. Logic circuit structures, I/O and interface, clocking, and timing schemes are reviewed and described. Characteristics, sensitivities and idiosyncrasies of each are highlighted. High Speed CMOS Design Styles also pulls together and explains contributors to performance variability that are associated with process, applications conditions and design. Rules of thumb and practical references are offered. Each of the general circuit families is then analyzed for its sensitivity and response to this variability. High Speed CMOS Design Styles is an excellent source of ideas and a compilation of observations that highlight how different approaches trade off critical parameters in design and process space.

After long years of work that have seen little industrial application, high-level synthesis is finally on the verge of becoming a practical tool. The state of high-level synthesis today is similar to the state of logic synthesis ten years ago. At present, logic-synthesis tools are widely used in digital system design. In the future, high-level synthesis will play a key role in mastering design complexity and in truly exploiting the potential of ASIes and PLDs, which demand extremely short design cycles. Work on high-level synthesis began over twenty years ago. Since substantial progress has been made in understanding the basic then, problems involved, although no single universally-accepted theoretical framework has yet emerged. There is a growing number of publications devoted to high-level synthesis, specialized workshops are held regularly, and tutorials on the topic are commonly held at major conferences. This book gives an extensive survey of the research and development in high-level synthesis. In Part I, a short tutorial explains the basic concepts used in high-level synthesis, and follows an example design throughout the synthesis process. In Part II, current high-level synthesis systems are surveyed.

Models in System Design tracks the general trend in electronics in terms of size, complexity and difficulty of maintenance. System design is by nature combined with prototyping, mixed domain design, and verification, and it is no surprise that today's modeling and models are used in various levels of system design and verification. In order to deal with constraints induced by volume and complexity, new methods and techniques have been defined. Models in System Design provides an overview of the latest modeling techniques for use by system designers. The first part of the book considers system level design, discussing such issues as abstraction, performance and trade-offs. There is also a section on automating system design. The second part of the book deals with some of the newest aspects of embedded system design. These include co-verification and prototyping. Finally, the book includes a section on the use of the MCSE methodology for hardware/software co-design. Models in System Design will help designers and researchers to understand these latest techniques in system design and as such will be of interest to all involved in embedded system design.

The "Fifth International Conference on Simulation of Semiconductor Devices and Processes" (SISDEP 93) continues a series of conferences which was initiated in 1984 by K. Board and D. R. J. Owen at the University College of Wales, Swansea, where it took place a second time in 1986. Its organization was succeeded by G. Baccarani and M. Rudan at the University of Bologna in 1988, and W. Fichtner and D. Aemmer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1991. This year the conference is held at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, September 7 - 9, 1993. This conference shall provide an international forum for the presentation of out standing research and development results in the area of numerical process and de vice simulation. The miniaturization of today's semiconductor devices, the usage of new materials and advanced process steps in the development of new semiconduc tor technologies suggests the design of new computer programs. This trend towards more complex structures and increasingly sophisticated processes demands advanced simulators, such as fully three-dimensional tools for almost arbitrarily complicated geometries. With the increasing need for better models and improved understand ing of physical effects, the Conference on Simulation of Semiconductor Devices and Processes brings together the simulation community and the process- and device en gineers who need reliable numerical simulation tools for characterization, prediction, and development."

Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation, Second Edition is a core reference text for graduate students and CAD professionals. Based on the very successful First Edition, it provides a comprehensive treatment of the principles and algorithms of VLSI physical design, presenting the concepts and algorithms in an intuitive manner. Each chapter contains 3-4 algorithms that are discussed in detail. Additional algorithms are presented in a somewhat shorter format. References to advanced algorithms are presented at the end of each chapter. Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation covers all aspects of physical design. In 1992, when the First Edition was published, the largest available microprocessor had one million transistors and was fabricated using three metal layers. Now we process with six metal layers, fabricating 15 million transistors on a chip. Designs are moving to the 500-700 MHz frequency goal. These stunning developments have significantly altered the VLSI field: over-the-cell routing and early floorplanning have come to occupy a central place in the physical design flow. This Second Edition introduces a realistic picture to the reader, exposing the concerns facing the VLSI industry, while maintaining the theoretical flavor of the First Edition. New material has been added to all chapters, new sections have been added to most chapters, and a few chapters have been completely rewritten. The textual material is supplemented and clarified by many helpful figures. Audience: An invaluable reference for professionals in layout, design automation and physical design.

Designing is one of the foundations for change in our society. It is a fundamental precursor to manufacturing, fabrication and construction. Design research aims to develop an understanding of designing and to produce models of designing that can be used to aid designing. The papers in this volume are from the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Design (AID'00) held in June 2000, in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. They represent the state of the art and the cutting edge of research and development in this field, and demonstrate both the depth and breadth of the artificial intelligence paradigm in design. They point the way for the development of advanced computer-based tools to aid designers, and describe advances in both theory and application. This volume will be of particular interest to researchers, developers, and users of advanced computer systems in design.

'Subdivision' is a way of representing smooth shapes in a computer. A curve or surface (both of which contain an in?nite number of points) is described in terms of two objects. One object is a sequence of vertices, which we visualise as a polygon, for curves, or a network of vertices, which we visualise by drawing the edges or faces of the network, for surfaces. The other object is a set of rules for making denser sequences or networks. When applied repeatedly, the denser and denser sequences are claimed to converge to a limit, which is the curve or surface that we want to represent. This book focusses on curves, because the theory for that is complete enough that a book claiming that our understanding is complete is exactly what is needed to stimulate research proving that claim wrong. Also because there are already a number of good books on subdivision surfaces. The way in which the limit curve relates to the polygon, and a lot of interesting properties of the limit curve, depend on the set of rules, and this book is about how one can deduce those properties from the set of rules, and how one can then use that understanding to construct rules which give the properties that one wants.

One of the main applications of VHDL is the synthesis of electronic circuits. Circuit Synthesis with VHDL is an introduction to the use of VHDL logic (RTL) synthesis tools in circuit design. The modeling styles proposed are independent of specific market tools and focus on constructs widely recognized as synthesizable by synthesis tools. A statement of the prerequisites for synthesis is followed by a short introduction to the VHDL concepts used in synthesis. Circuit Synthesis with VHDL presents two possible approaches to synthesis: the first starts with VHDL features and derives hardware counterparts; the second starts from a given hardware component and derives several description styles. The book also describes how to introduce the synthesis design cycle into existing design methodologies and the standard synthesis environment. Circuit Synthesis with VHDL concludes with a case study providing a realistic example of the design flow from behavioral description down to the synthesized level. Circuit Synthesis with VHDL is essential reading for all students, researchers, design engineers and managers working with VHDL in a synthesis environment.

Short turnaround has become critical in the design of electronic systems. Software- programmable components such as microprocessors and digital signal processors have been used extensively in such systems since they allow rapid design revisions. However, the inherent performance limitations of software-programmable systems mean that they are inadequate for high-performance designs. Designers thus turned to gate arrays as a solution. User-programmable gate arrays (field-programmable gate arrays, FPGAs) have recently emerged and are changing the way electronic systems are designed and implemented. The growing complexity of the logic circuits that can be packed onto an FPGA chip means that it has become important to have automatic synthesis tools that implement logic functions on these architectures. Logic Synthesis for Field-Programmable Gate Arrays describes logic synthesis for both look-up table (LUT) and multiplexor-based architectures, with a balanced presentation of existing techniques together with algorithms and the system developed by the authors. Audience: A useful reference for VLSI designers, developers of computer-aided design tools, and anyone involved in or with FPGAs.

The ever-increasing miniaturization of digital electronic components is hampering the conventional testing of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) by means of bed-of-nails fixtures. Basically this is caused by the very high scale of integration of ICs, through which packages with hundreds of pins at very small pitches of down to a fraction of a millimetre, have become available. As a consequence the trace distances between the copper tracks on a printed circuit board cmne down to the same value. Not only the required small physical dimensions of the test nails have made conventional testing unfeasible, but also the complexity to provide test signals for the many hundreds of test nails has grown out of limits. Therefore a new board test methodology had to be invented. Following the evolution in the IC test technology. Boundary-Scan testing hm; become the new approach to PCB testing. By taking precautions in the design of the IC (design for testability), testing on PCB level can be simplified 10 a great extent. This condition has been essential for the success of the introduction of Boundary-Sc, m Test (BST) at board level

Application-Driven Architecture Synthesis describes the state of the art of architectural synthesis for complex real-time processing. In order to deal with the stringent timing requirements and the intricacies of complex real-time signal and data processing, target architecture styles and target application domains have been adopted to make the synthesis approach feasible. These approaches are also heavily application-driven, which is illustrated by many realistic demonstrations, used as examples in the book. The focus is on domains where application-specific solutions are attractive, such as significant parts of audio, telecom, instrumentation, speech, robotics, medical and automotive processing, image and video processing, TV, multi-media, radar, sonar. Application-Driven Architecture Synthesis is of interest to both academics and senior design engineers and CAD managers in industry. It provides an excellent overview of what capabilities to expect from future practical design tools, and includes an extensive bibliography.

Model Generation in Electronic Design covers a wide range of model applications and research. The book begins by describing a model generator to create component models. It goes on to discuss ASIC design and ASIC library generation. This section includes chapters on the requirements for developing and ASIC library, a case study in which VITAL is used to create such a library, and the analysis and description of the accuracy required in modeling interconnections in ASIC design. Other chapters describe the development of thermal models for electronic devices, the development of a set of model packages for VHDL floating point operations, a techniques for model validation and verification, and a tool for model encryption. Model Generation in Electronic Design is an essential update for users, vendors, model producers, technical managers, designers and researchers working in electronic design.

Computer-Aided Verification is a collection of papers that begins with a general survey of hardware verification methods. Ms. Gupta starts with the issue of verification itself and develops a taxonomy of verification methodologies, focusing especially upon recent advances. Although her emphasis is hardware verification, most of what she reports applies to software verification as well. Graphical presentation is coming to be a de facto requirement for a 'friendly' user interface. The second paper presents a generic format for graphical presentations of coordinating systems represented by automata. The last two papers as a pair, present a variety of generic techniques for reducing the computational cost of computer-aided verification based upon explicit computational memory: the first of the two gives a time-space trade-off, while the second gives a technique which trades space for a (sometimes predictable) probability of error. Computer-Aided Verification is an edited volume of original research. This research work has also been published as a special issue of the journal Formal Methods in System Design, 1:2-3.

This is a milestone in machine-assisted microprocessor verification. Gordon [20] and Hunt [32] led the way with their verifications of sim ple designs, Cohn [12, 13] followed this with the verification of parts of the VIPER microprocessor. This work illustrates how much these, and other, pioneers achieved in developing tractable models, scalable tools, and a robust methodology. A condensed review of previous re search, emphasising the behavioural model underlying this style of verification is followed by a careful, and remarkably readable, ac count of the SECD architecture, its formalisation, and a report on the organisation and execution of the automated correctness proof in HOL. This monograph reports on Graham's MSc project, demonstrat ing that - in the right hands - the tools and methodology for formal verification can (and therefore should?) now be applied by someone with little previous expertise in formal methods, to verify a non-trivial microprocessor in a limited timescale. This is not to belittle Graham's achievement; the production of this proof, work ing as Graham did from the previous literature, goes well beyond a typical MSc project. The achievement is that, with this exposition to hand, an engineer tackling the verification of similar microprocessor designs will have a clear view of the milestones that must be passed on the way, and of the methods to be applied to achieve them.

VHDL Answers to Frequently asked Questions is a follow-up to the author's book VHDL Coding Styles and Methodologies (ISBN 0-7923-9598-0). On completion of his first book, the author continued teaching VHDL and actively participated in the comp. lang. vhdl newsgroup. During his experiences, he was enlightened by the many interesting issues and questions relating to VHDL and synthesis. These pertained to: misinterpretations in the use of the language; methods for writing error free, and simulation efficient, code for testbench designs and for synthesis; and general principles and guidelines for design verification. As a result of this wealth of public knowledge contributed by a large VHDL community, the author decided to act as a facilitator of this information by collecting different classes of VHDL issues, and by elaborating on these topics through complete simulatable examples. TItis book is intended for those who are seeking an enhanced proficiency in VHDL. Its target audience includes: 1. Engineers. The book addresses a set of problems commonly experienced by real users of VHDL. It provides practical explanations to the questions, and suggests practical solutions to the raised issues. It also includes packages of common utilities that are useful in the generation of debug code and testbench designs. These packages include conversions to strings (the IMAGE package), generation of Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFSR), Multiple Input Shift Register (MISR), and random number generators.

Improvement in the quality of integrated circuit designs and a designer's productivity can be achieved by a combination of two factors: * Using more structured design methodologies for extensive reuse of existing components and subsystems. It seems that 70% of new designs correspond to existing components that cannot be reused because of a lack of methodologies and tools. * Providing higher level design tools allowing to start from a higher level of abstraction. After the success and the widespread acceptance of logic and RTL synthesis, the next step is behavioral synthesis, commonly called architectural or high-level synthesis. Behavioral Synthesis and Component Reuse with VHDL provides methods and techniques for VHDL based behavioral synthesis and component reuse. The goal is to develop VHDL modeling strategies for emerging behavioral synthesis tools. Special attention is given to structured and modular design methods allowing hierarchical behavioral specification and design reuse.The goal of this book is not to discuss behavioral synthesis in general or to discuss a specific tool but to describe the specific issues related to behavioral synthesis of VHDL description. This book targets designers who have to use behavioral synthesis tools or who wish to discover the real possibilities of this emerging technology. The book will also be of interest to teachers and students interested to learn or to teach VHDL based behavioral synthesis.

The intense drive for signal integrity has been at the forefront of rapid and new developments in CAD algorithms. With increasing demands for high signal speeds coupled with a decrease in feature size, interconnect effects such as signal delay, distortion and crosstalk become the dominant factor limiting overall performance of VLSI systems. Although SPICE is used on a daily basis by many engineers for analog simulation and general circuit analysis, current versions of SPICE do not handle adequately the new emerging challenges of interconnect effects. Moment-matching techniques, such as asymptotic waveform evaluation, have recently proven useful in the analysis of large interconnect structures containing elements such as lossy coupled transmission lines with linear or nonlinear terminations. At a CPU cost of a little more than one DC analysis, these techniques are 2--3 orders of magnitude faster than full simulation techniques such as FFT. Asymptotic Waveform Evaluation presents an overview of the diverse algorithms and applications of moment matching techniques. The material is presented systematically and is supported by many examples.Issues such as sensitivity analysis and three-dimensional analysis are also covered. Asymptotic Waveform Evaluation will be of interest to engineers, students and researchers involved in the development and study of circuit simulation as well as interconnect analysis. It will also interest design engineers who are involved in dealing with high-speed issues, and graduate students who are active in the development of CAD tools for electronic systems.

In order to design and build computers that achieve and sustain high performance, it is essential that reliability issues be considered care fully. The problem has several aspects. Certainly, considering reliability implies that an engineer must be able to analyze how design decisions affect the incidence of failure. For instance, in order design reliable inte gritted circuits, it is necessary to analyze how decisions regarding design rules affect the yield, i.e., the percentage of functional chips obtained by the manufacturing process. Of equal importance in producing reliable computers is the detection of failures in its Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuit components, caused by errors in the design specification, implementation, or manufacturing processes. Design verification involves the checking of the specification of a design for correctness prior to carrying out an implementation. Implementation verification ensures that the manual design or automatic synthesis process is correct, i.e., the mask-level description correctly implements the specification. Manufacture test involves the checking of the complex fabrication process for correctness, i.e., ensuring that there are no manufacturing defects in the integrated circuit. It should be noted that all the above verification mechanisms deal not only with verifying the functionality of the integrated circuit but also its performance."

Recent years have seen rapid strides in the level of sophistication of VLSI circuits. On the performance front, there is a vital need for techniques to design fast, low-power chips with minimum area for increasingly complex systems, while on the economic side there is the vastly increased pressure of time-to-market. These pressures have made the use of CAD tools mandatory in designing complex systems. Timing Analysis and Optimization of Sequential Circuits describes CAD algorithms for analyzing and optimizing the timing behavior of sequential circuits with special reference to performance parameters such as power and area. A unified approach to performance analysis and optimization of sequential circuits is presented. The state of the art in timing analysis and optimization techniques is described for circuits using edge-triggered or level-sensitive memory elements. Specific emphasis is placed on two methods that are true sequential timing optimizations techniques: retiming and clock skew optimization.Timing Analysis and Optimization of Sequential Circuits covers the following topics: * Algorithms for sequential timing analysis * Fast algorithms for clock skew optimization and their applications * Efficient techniques for retiming large sequential circuits * Coupling sequential and combinational optimizations. Timing Analysis and Optimization of Sequential Circuits is written for graduate students, researchers and professionals in the area of CAD for VLSI and VLSI circuit design.

Integrated circuit technology is widely used for the full integration of electronic systems. In general, these systems are realized using digital techniques implemented in CMOS technology. The low power dissipation, high packing density, high noise immunity, ease of design and the relative ease of scaling are the driving forces of CMOS technology for digital applications. Parts of these systems cannot be implemented in the digital domain and will remain analog. In order to achieve complete system integration these analog functions are preferably integrated in the same CMOS technology. An important class of analog circuits that need to be integrated in CMOS are analog filters. This book deals with very high frequency (VHF) filters, which are filters with cut-off frequencies ranging from the low megahertz range to several hundreds of megahertz. Until recently the maximal cut-off frequencies of CMOS filters were limited to the low megahertz range. By applying the techniques presented in this book the limit could be pushed into the true VHF domain, and integrated VHF filters become feasible. Application of these VHF filters can be found in the field of communication, instrumentation and control systems. For example, pre and post filtering for high-speed AD and DA converters, signal reconstruction, signal decoding, etc. The general design philosophy used in this book is to allow only the absolute minimum of signal carrying nodes throughout the whole filter. This strategy starts at the filter synthesis level and is extended to the level of electronic circuitry. The result is a filter realization in which all capacitators (including parasitics) have a desired function. The advantage of this technique is that high frequency parasitic effects (parasitic poles/zeros) are minimally present. The book is a reference for engineers in research or development, and is suitable for use as a text for advanced courses on the subject. >

The automation of layout synthesis design under stringent timing specifications is essential for state-of-the-art VLSI circuits and systems design. Especially, the timing-driven layout synthesis with optimal placement and routing of transistors with proper sizing is most critical in view of the chip area, interconnection parasitics, circuit delay and power dissipation. This book presents a systematic and unified view of the layout synthesis problem with a strong focus on CMOS technology. The criticality of RC parasitics in the interconnects and the optimal sizing of both p-channel and n-channel translators are illustrated for motivation. Following the motivation, the problems of modeling circuit delays and translator sizing are formulated and solved with mathematical rigor. Various delay models for CMOS circuits are discussed to account for realistic interconnection parasitics, the effect of transistor sizes, and also the input slew rates. Also many of the efficient transistor sizing algorithms are critically reviewed and the most recent transistor sizing algorithm based on convex programming techniques is introduced.For design automation of the rigorous CMOS layout synthesis, an integrated system that employs a suite of functional modules is introduced for step-by-step illustration of the design optimization process that produces highly compact CMOS layouts that meet user-specified timing and logical netlist requirements. Through most rigorous discussion of the essential design automation process steps and important models and algorithms this book presents a unified systems approach that can be practiced for high-performance CMOS VLSI designs. This book serves as an excellent reference, and can be used as text in advanced courses covering VLSI design, especially for design automation of physical design.

Practical Synthesis of High-Performance Analog Circuits presents a technique for automating the design of analog circuits. Market competition and the astounding pace of technological innovation exert tremendous pressure on circuit design engineers to turn ideas into products quickly and get them to market. In digital Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design, computer aided design (CAD) tools have substantially eased this pressure by automating many of the laborious steps in the design process, thereby allowing the designer to maximise his design expertise. But the world is not solely digital. Cellular telephones, magnetic disk drives, neural networks and speech recognition systems are a few of the recent technological innovations that rely on a core of analog circuitry and exploit the density and performance of mixed analog/digital ASICs. To maximize profit, these mixed-signal ASICs must also make it to market as quickly as possible. However, although the engineer working on the digital portion of the ASIC can rely on sophisticated CAD tools to automate much of the design process, there is little help for the engineer working on the analog portion of the chip. With the exception of simulators to verify the circuit design when it is complete, there are almost no general purpose CAD tools that an analog design engineer can take advantage of to automate the analog design flow and reduce his time to market. Practical Synthesis of High-Performance Analog Circuits presents a new variation-tolerant analog synthesis strategy that is a significant step towards ending the wait for a practical analog synthesis tool. A new synthesis strategy is presented that can fully automate the path from a circuit topology and performance specifications to a sized variation-tolerant circuit schematic. This strategy relies on asymptotic waveform evaluation to predict circuit performance and simulated annealing to solve a novel non-linear infinite programming optimization formulation of the circuit synthesis problem via a sequence of smaller optimization problems. Practical Synthesis of High-Performance Analog Circuits will be of interest to analog circuit designers, CAD EDA industry professionals, academics and students.

It is a great honor to provide a few words of introduction for Dr. Georges Gielen's and Prof. Willy Sansen's book "Symbolic analysis for automated design of analog integrated circuits." The symbolic analysis method presented in this book represents a significant step forward in the area of analog circuit design. As demonstrated in this book, symbolic analysis opens up new possibilities for the development of computer-aided design (CAD) tools that can analyze an analog circuit topology and automatically size the components for a given set of specifications. Symbolic analysis even has the potential to improve the training of young analog circuit designers and to guide more experienced designers through second-order phenomena such as distortion. This book can also serve as an excellent reference for researchers in the analog circuit design area and creators of CAD tools, as it provides a comprehensive overview and comparison of various approaches for analog circuit design automation and an extensive bibliography. The world is essentially analog in nature, hence most electronic systems involve both analog and digital circuitry. As the number of transistors that can be integrated on a single integrated circuit (IC) substrate steadily increases over time, an ever increasing number of systems will be implemented with one, or a few, very complex ICs because of their lower production costs.