AI techniques and object-oriented technology for VLSI design-space representation, optimization, and management

The VLSI design process consists of many highly specialized tasks. Algorithmic, compute-intensive and mundane tasks which used to be performed manually, have been automated by traditional VLSI CAD tools. These tools have automated many aspects of VLSI design synthesis, analysis, optimization and verification. However, the successful and efficient utilization of these tools has proved to be very knowledge intensive requiring the interaction and guidance of domain experts. In recent years many expert systems for VLSI design have been reported but these stand-alone expert systems have to be integrated with traditional CAD tools to be able to provide automated decision-making, judgment-based opportunity ranking and tighter data source integration. Furthermore, an integrated and distributed knowledge-base is essential for rapid prototyping of expert design assistants, design techniques and optimization heuristics. We report an experimental VLSI design environment based on a central object-oriented model-base. The object-oriented design kernel is capable of accommodating traditional CAD tools as well as knowledge-based tools.