Abstract: A method of considering circuit timing requirements during the circuit design process, comprising receiving a clock cycle-time constraint; receiving delay characteristics of hardware resources from a macrocell library; receiving an operation, an alternative clock cycle associated with said operation and an alternative hardware resource associated with said operation; and determining validity of the received alternative with respect to timing constraints using a hardware structural representation of the program graph.

Abstract: A method for performing a global timing analysis of a proposed digital circuit comprising receiving timing models and the proposed digital circuit; determining at least one mode of circuit operation of the proposed digital circuit; deriving a sub-circuit corresponding to each of at least one mode of circuit operation; performing timing analysis on each of the sub-circuits derived corresponding to each of the modes; and combining the timing analysis results for all of the modes to determine an overall maximum circuit delay.

Abstract: A technique for synthesizing digital circuit designs by incorporating timing convergence and routability considerations. In one aspect, the invention provides a system and programmatic method for generating a circuit design from a functional specification according to at least one design objective. An intermediate representation of the functional specification is formed. The intermediate representation is analyzed for identifying a physical instantiation that will possibly result in unacceptable interconnect delay or congestion. Functional units are allocated from among a plurality of candidate functional units for performing operations of the intermediate representation. Operations are scheduled to occur at specified times on said selected functional units. An architectural representation of the circuit design is formed according to results of scheduling.

Abstract: A VLIW processor design system automates the design of programmable and non-programmable VLIW processors. The system takes as input an opcode repertoire, the I/O format of the opcodes, a register file specification, and instruction-level parallelism constraints. With this input specification, the system constructs a datapath, including functional units, register files and their interconnect components from a macrocell database. The system uses the input and the datapath to generate an instruction format design. The instruction format may then be used to construct the processor control path. The abstract input and datapath may be used to extract a machine description suitable to re-target a compiler to the processor. To optimize the processor for a particular application program, the system selects custom instruction templates based on operation issue statistics for the application program generated by the re-targeted compiler.

Abstract: An MDES extractor automatically extracts a machine description (MDES) for re-targeting a compiler from a structural representation of a datapath of an explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC) processor. The datapath is a machine readable data structure that specifies the functional unit instances and an interconnect of the functional unit instances to registers. The MDES extractor structurally traverses the interconnect, identifying resource conflicts among the operations in the processor's opcode repertoire. Latencies and internal resources of the opcodes associated with the functional unit instances are obtained from a macrocell library. The MDES extractor then identifies external resource conflicts by preparing reservation tables for the functional units.

Abstract: A VLIW processor design system automates the design of programmable and non-programmable VLIW processors. The system takes as input an opcode repertoire, the I/O format of the opcodes, a register file specification, and instruction-level parallelism constraints. With this input specification, the system constructs a datapath, including functional units, register files and their interconnect components from a macrocell database. The system uses the input and the datapath to generate an instruction format design. The instruction format may then be used to construct the processor control path. The abstract input and datapath may be used to extract a machine description suitable to re-target a compiler to the processor. To optimize the processor for a particular application program, the system selects custom instruction templates based on operation issue statistics for the application program generated by the re-targeted compiler.

Abstract: A programmatic method transforms a nested loop in a high level programming language into a set of parallel processes, each a single time loop, such that the parallel processes satisfy a specified design constraint. Another programmatic method synthesizes a processor array from the set of parallel processes and a specified design constraint.

Abstract: An automated method for designing a processor's control path employs program routines that synthesize the control path based on the processor's instruction format and data path specification. It extracts parameters from a machine-readable description of the processor's instruction format, and generates a specification of the components in the control path and their interconnection with the control ports in the data path.

Abstract: A computational unit for use in loop computations. The computational unit includes a function unit, a plurality of phase lines, and a storage register. The computational unit is programmed to initiate one iteration of the loop every II cycles. Each function unit has a result output for outputting one computational result each cycle. There is one phase line corresponding to each of the II cycles. The storage register includes a linear connected array of shift cells having a first shift cell. Each shift cell has an input port, an output port, a shift control port, and an OR gate. Each shift cell receives the value to be stored in the shift cell on the input port, the stored value being stored in response to a control signal on the shift control port. The OR gate has an output connected to the shift enable port and one input for each cycle on which that shift cell is to receive the control signal, that input being connected to the phase line corresponding to that cycle.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method automates the design of efficient binary instruction encodings of VLIW instruction formats. The method automatically finds compact instruction formats that can express and exploit the full parallelism specified in the underlying processor microarchitecture, subject to constraints on alignment and decode hardware complexity. The method can be guided by statistics about the composition and frequency of program instructions, so that the instruction format design is customized to a particular set of applications or an application domain.

Abstract: A VLIW processor design system automates the design of programmable and non-programmable VLIW processors. The system takes as input an opcode repertoire, the I/O format of the opcodes, a register file specification, and instruction-level parallelism constraints. With this input specification, the system constructs a datapath, including functional units, register files and their interconnect components from a macrocell database. The system uses the input and the datapath to generate an instruction format design. The instruction format may then be used to construct the processor control path. The abstract input and datapath may be used to extract a machine description suitable to re-target a compiler to the processor. To optimize the processor for a particular application program, the system selects custom instruction templates based on operation issue statistics for the application program generated by the re-targeted compiler.

Abstract: A VLIW processor design system automates the design of programmable and non-programmable VLIW processors. The system takes as input an opcode repertoire, the I/O format of the opcodes, a register file specification, and instruction-level parallelism constraints. With this input specification, the system constructs a datapath, including functional units, register files and their interconnect components from a macrocell database. The system uses the input and the datapath to generate an instruction format design. The instruction format may then be used to construct the processor control path. The abstract input and datapath may be used to extract a machine description suitable to re-target a compiler to the processor. To optimize the processor for a particular application program, the system selects custom instruction templates based on operation issue statistics for the application program generated by the re-targeted compiler.

Abstract: An automated design system for VLIW processors explores a parameterized design space to assist in identifying candidate processor designs that satisfy desired design constraints, such as processor cost and performance. A VLIW synthesis process takes as input a specification of processor parameters and synthesizes a datapath specification, an instruction format design, and a control path specification. The synthesis process also extracts a machine description suitable to re-target a compiler. The re-targeted compiler generates operation issue statistics for an application program or set of programs. Using these statistics, a procedure for searching the design space can extract internal resources utilization information that is used to determine new candidate processors for evaluation.

Abstract: A VLIW processor design system automates the design of programmable and non-programmable VLIW processors. The system takes as input an opcode repertoire, the I/O format of the opcodes, a register file specification, and instruction-level parallelism constraints. With this input specification, the system constructs a datapath, including functional units, register files and their interconnect components from a macrocell database. The system uses the input and the datapath to generate an instruction format design. The instruction format may then be used to construct the processor control path. The abstract input and datapath may be used to extract a machine description suitable to re-target a compiler to the processor. To optimize the processor for a particular application program, the system selects custom instruction templates based on operation issue statistics for the application program generated by the re-targeted compiler.