Computer Aids for VLSI Design
Steven M. Rubin
Copyright © 1994


Chapter 2: Design Environments

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2.6 Summary

This chapter has illustrated a wide range of environments that can be provided for digital electronic design. Each environment consists of primitive components and their connections. It is important that an environment model the designer's notions of circuitry and provide a comfortable means of communication with the design system. Environments exist at many levels of specification to help designers from the machine architect to the IC mask designer. There are even some environments that have nothing to do with electronics. All together, it should be seen that a well-planned set of components can be a great aid to design, and a good collection of environments can work together to provide a powerful design facility.


Questions

  1. How would you modify PMS for modern computer architectures?
  2. What is the most difficult aspect of translating from dataflow to control flow?
  3. Propose an alternative organization of design environments to the one in Fig. 2.2.
  4. How would you change the schematics environment to include wires with multiple signals (such as buses or transmission lines)?
  5. How does the sticks environment differ from the schematics environment?
  6. How would you graphically describe the ISP environment?
  7. Why is CMOS design more difficult than nMOS?
  8. Convert the AND, OR, NOT, and IMPLICATION to equivalent logic using only NOR.


References


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