Computer Aided Design of Digital Circuits and Systems

This course presents fundamental concepts, techniques, and tools for the computer-aided design of digital systems at various levels of abstraction. The emphasis of the course is on identification of design problems, their mathematical formulation and solution using computers. Topics include specification and modeling languages; behavioral optimizations; scheduling, binding, data-path and control synthesis; physical design problems in partitioning, placement and routing.

Students should have familiarity with fundamentals of integrated circuit blocks; algorithms and data structures. Some programming experience will be essential.

Class meets Tu Th 1:00-2:20 PM in ICS 2 Room 144.

Course outline and lecture notes:

1. Welcome. HTML.
2. Introduction. HTML.
3. Review of basic concepts in algorithms and graph theory. HTML.
4. Design representation and modeling. HTML.
5. Abstract Models HTML.
6. Problems in Architectural Level Synthesis HTML.
7. Scheduling Under Timing Constraints HTML.
8. Scheduling Under Resource Constraints HTML.
9. Scheduling Heuristics HTML.
10. Resource Binding and Sharing HTML.
11. Structural Synthesis HTML.
12. Synthesis at lower levels of abstraction HTML.
13. Logic Synthesis HTML.
14. Constrained encoding HTML. 5/22.
15. Technology mapping as a link to PDA
16. Issues in ``system-level'' CAD

Course Organization:

Consists of lecture presentations on background information. Take home reading assignments of selected papers. Supervised laboratory work and project.

Credit: 4 units.

Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor.

Homeworks and Solutions:

• Homework 1. HTML
• Solution to Homework 1. HTML
• Homework 2. HTML
• Homework 3. HTML
• Solution to Homework 2. HTML
• Solution to Homework 3. HTML 6/6.
• Take home final examination. HTML Fri Jun 6 18:35:03 PDT 1997 Here is additional information for the final examination:
  • You can find the program binaries (for SunSPARC) in this directory.
  • Problem Set 2: Architectural Synthesis
    1. Please look into directory "set2" for required files and scripts.
  • Problem Set 3: Logic Synthesis
    1. Please look into directory "set3" for required files and scripts.

Announcements:

1. Check the newsgroup: ics.280f.

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