Systematic Methods For Designing Large Digital Systems

This project concerns the development of a design methodology for digital systems together with associated techniques for system description, analysis and synthesis. A primary aim of the project is to reduce design and development time through use of a set of computer-based tools constituting a design automation system. Criteria for specification techniques are identified. A structured design language is presented which allows a specification to be expressed in an algorithmic form containing sequential and concurrent operations, followed by automatic syntactic and structural correctness checking. Criteria for hardware design methodologies are identified. A system model is described which consists of communicating modules which are synchronised for the purpose of data transfer but which otherwise operate concurrently. Algorithms are presented for the construction of connectivity and reachability matrices representing hierarchical control graphs containing conditional operators. Hardware realisation of the system components is described, and a set of self-timed circuits suitable for the synthesis of both controller and data paths are presented. Other aspects of the design process such as the construction of modular and hierarchical systems are discussed. The concepts and methods introduced are implemented as a design automation system and examples of automatic synthesis are presented.