EXPERIMENT IN SILICON COMPILATION.

Abstract

A very-high-level design language, which permits concise descriptions of VLSI systems in algorithmic form, has been developed. The description is compiled to a register transfer language by first decomposing it into a program graph. This graph is examined to generate a controlling state machine and the physical data path elements. A logic synthesis system is used to generate an interconnected set of complex circuit blocks which provides a logical description of the design. Another tool converts the logic to a description of silicon mask levels by generating a cell for each block, placing the cells in a standard image form and wiring the interconnections between the cells. A small-microprocessor example from the MIT MacPitts project was compared to an implementation using this technique. The effectiveness of the language is evaluated by comparing it to a hand-coded version. The results show that a higher level specification can be compiled into a reasonable chip size when compared to other methods.