High-level synthesis and optimization strategies in Hercules and Hebe

Abstract

Presents an approach to automated synthesis of digital circuits from behavioral specifications. The system, called Hercules and Hebe, offers many advantages to the designer. First, the system supports constraint-driven synthesis where timing and resource constraints are applied to guide the synthesis decisions. Second, systematic design space exploration is possible, where the designer explores the tradeoff between area and performance to meet the design objectives. Third, logic synthesis techniques are uniformly incorporated within the synthesis framework to provide estimates to guide high-level decisions. Along with a synthesis oriented hardware description language called HardwareC, Hercules/Hebe provides an environment for the design of general synchronous digital circuits, with specific attention to the requirements of ASIC designs. The system has been applied to complex ASIC designs, including the Digital Audio I/O, MAMA, and Bi-Dimensional DCT chips.<>