Abstract: Guidance provision to the creation of an electronic design is facilitated through a method that includes facilitating interactive exploration of the electronic design by a designer to aid the designer in formulating his/her guidance, and facilitating the designer in interactively providing the formulated guidance. In one embodiment, facilitation of interactive exploration by the designer include facilitating interactive cross-probing into a number of issues about the design, including generated candidate architectures for the design. In one embodiment, the issues available for cross probing include inter-dependencies of data and mobility of operations of the design, as well as occupation of hardware resources for the generated candidate architectures. In one embodiment, Gantt diagrams are employed to facilitate navigation by the designer in performing the interactive cross probing. Gantt diagrams graphically representing the generated candidate architectures are selectively presented to the designer.

Abstract: An electronic design is created through a machine implemented method that includes evolutionarily generating candidate architectures for the electronic design, with the evolutionary generation of the candidate architectures being periodically guided by the designer, and generating an implementation specification for the design in accordance with a selected one of the evolutionarily generated candidate architectures. In one embodiment, the candidate architectures are evolutionarily generated on different abstraction levels, and the generated candidate architectures on the different abstraction levels may be selectively regenerated as often as desired by the designer. In one embodiment, the periodic guidance includes periodic modification of the constraints on the electronic design. In one embodiment, the method further includes facilitating periodic exploration of the electronic design, including the generated candidate architectures, by the designer, to aid the designer in formulating his/her guidance.

Abstract: Candidate architectures for an electronic design are created through a machine implemented method that includes initially generating one or more initial candidate architectures for the electronic design on a top abstraction level, and subsequently generating additional candidate architectures for the electronic design at one or more lower abstraction level, in accordance with periodic guidance provided by a designer. In one embodiment, the initial candidate architectures on the top abstraction level are generated in accordance with a behavioral specification of the electronic design, and an initial set of constraints on the electronic design, independently described, and include application of a de-abstraction transformation.