Report Number: CSL-TR-94-646
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Technology Mapping for VLSI Circuits Exploiting Boolean Properties and Operations
Author: Mailhot, Frederic
Date: December 1994
Abstract: Automatic synthesis of digital circuits has gained increasing importance. The synthesis process consists of transforming an abstract representation of a system into an implementation in a target technology. The set of transformations has traditionally been broken into three steps: high-level synthesis, logic synthesis and physical design. This dissertation is concerned with logic synthesis. More specifically, we study technology mapping, which is the link between logic synthesis and physical design. The object of technology mapping is to transform a technology-independent logic description into an implementation in a target technology. One of teh key operations during technology mapping is to recognize logic equivalence between a portion of the initial logic description and an element of the target technology. We introduce new methods for establishing logic equivalence between two logic functions. The techniques, based on Boolean comparisons, use Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs). An algorithm for dealing with completely specified functions is first presented. Then we introduce a second algorithm, which is applicable to incompletely specified functions. We also present an ensemble of techniques for optimizing delay, which rely on an iterative approach. All these methods have proven to be efficient both for run-times and quality of results, when compared to other existing technology mapping systems. The algorithms presented have been implemented in a technology mapping program, Ceres. Results are shown that highlight the apllication of the different algorithms.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/94/646/CSL-TR-94-646.pdf