ISE4 / EE4 / MSc Synthesis of Digital Architectures

Imperial College OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE

Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Electrical & Electronic Eng. (EEE) MEng 4th Year
Information Systems Eng. (ISE) MEng 4th Year

Analogue and Digital Integrated Circuit Design MSc

Synthesis of Digital Architectures

Aims: To provide an understanding of architectural synthesis issues

Learning Outcomes:

Knowledge and understanding: the course will provide students with a background understanding and appreciation of the fast-growing area of design automation. The course will concentrate on the automatic design of architectures, particularly for the digital signal processing application domain. In addition the course will provide a useful transferrable knowledge base by introducing core elementary graph theory and integer linear programming.

Skills and other attributes: the course will apply discrete mathematical problem solving techniques to areas with highly practical application. The coursework element will involve the development of design tools, and hence build a strong practical skill base.

Syllabus

Introduction to the fundamental architectural synthesis problems: scheduling, allocation, binding, estimation, and control-unit synthesis
Introduction to graph theory and combinatorial optimization
Scheduling algorithms: as-soon-as-possible and as-late-as-possible, list scheduling, integer linear programming
Resource sharing algorithms: interval graphs, graph colouring, integer linear program models, register sharing
Retiming, function approximation
Perspectives for the future

Reading

Course textbook: G. De Micheli, Synthesis and Optimization of Digital Circuits, McGraw-Hill, 1994. ISBN: 0070163332 (approx $80 new, $40 used)
Recommended reading: K. K. Parhi, "VLSI Digital Signal Processing Systems", Wiley-Interscience, 1999.
Recommended reading: S. H. Gerez, "Algorithms for VLSI Design Automation", Wiley, 1999.
Recommended reading: M. McFarland, "The High-Level Synthesis of Digital Systems", Proc. IEEE, Vol. 78, No. 2, Feb. 1990 (can be found on IEEE Xplore)
Recommended reading: R. Camposano, "From Behavior to Structure: High-Level Synthesis", IEEE Design & Test of Computers, Oct. 1990 (can be found on IEEE Xplore)

Lecture Notes
Introduction to Lecture 4
Lecture 5 to Lecture 8
Lecture 9 to Lecture 20

Coursework
Coursework description
Coursework-related files - optional

This page is maintained by George Constantinides
Last updated: 17 October 2007