vaughan@puma.cad.mcc.com (Paul Vaughan) (02/28/91)
I'm interested in how designers go about estimating the sizes of various components for the purposes of floorplanning/partitioning/architectural decision making. I assume that fairly accurate (if not completely precise) area/aspect ratio figures are commonly estimated for certain well characterized modules given parameters of the intended process. Such modules include CLA adders, ripple carry adders, NxM multiplexors, register sets, caches (of any particular well-known sort), and even higher level modules such as whole MMU's, FPU's, ALU's. Less well characterized modules include random logic and state machines implemented in any of the popular design styles. I'm interested in any formula's, algorithms, or tools in common use, both simple and complex. Pointers to literature and even general discussion of approaches for any design style would be appreciated. For instance, I assume that for many designs using existing processes, certain modules can be found in component libraries and thus the figures are simply already known. Some modules are simply constructed from library components so just looking up the parts and adding it all together gives an accurate assessment. For other designs using new but not radically different processes, certain figures are simply scaled. Other approaches involve adding up component parts and adding in wiring allowances. Most of the literature I've seen so far has focussed on estimation as part of an automatic synthesis or floorplanning process for random logic implemented as standard cells and for DSP-oriented datapaths and controllers. -- Paul Vaughan, MCC CAD Program | ARPA: vaughan@mcc.com | Phone: [512] 338-3639 Box 200195, Austin, TX 78720 | UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!vaughan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I spent from $3 to $10 today to pay interest on the national debt. How about you? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------