Design technologies for integrated circuits

Prof. Giovanni De Micheli
Ecole Politechnique Fèdèrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

15 hours, 4 credits (final test)

April 2 - April 4, 2007
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione: Elettronica, Informatica, Telecomunicazioni, via G. Caruso, meeting room, ground floor

Contacts: Prof. Luca Fanucci

Objectives

Students will learn the techniques used for designing integrated circuits and systems starting from design languages and formalism to the synthesis and optimization of digital circuits in terms of logic gates.

Contents

Hardware compilation is the process of transforming specialized hardware description languages into circuit descriptions, which are iteratively refined, detailed and optimized. This series of lessons will present the most outstanding features of hardware compilation, as well as the techniques for optimizing logic representations and networks. The lessons give a novel, uptodate view of digital circuit design. Practical sessions will teach students the use of current design tools.

Syllabus

• Modeling languages and specification formalisms
• High-level synthesis and optimization methods (scheduling, binding, datapath and control synthesis)
• Representation and optimization of combinational logic functions (binary decision diagrams)
• Representation and optimization of multiple-level networks (algebraic and Boolean methods, "don't care" set computation, timing verification and optimization)
• Modeling and optimization of sequential functions and networks (retiming)
• Semicustom libraries and library binding

Prerequisites

Logic design principles, programming, digital design