Title
Symbolic NFA scheduling of a RISC microprocessor
Abstract
We describe a set of techniques for representing the high-level behavior of a digital subsystem as a collection of nondeterministic finite automata, NFA. Desired behavioral dynamics such as functional dependencies, sequential timing, and sequencing, and control state are similarly modeled. Using techniques similar to that used in formal model checking, we implicitly explore the possible execution sequences of the system, obeying all imposed constraints. This provides a very general, systematic mechanism for performing high-level synthesis of cyclic, control dominated behaviors, constrained by arbitrary sequential constraints. In this paper, we show that these techniques are scalable to practical problem sizes and complexities by constructing a high-level model of a (MIPS IV) RISC Microprocessor and then performing exact scheduling and related design tradeoffs on this model. The model is constructed at the level of register transactions to address the majority of contention and arbitration issues of architectural interest.
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1109/TVLSI.2002.807349
IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst.
Keywords
Field
DocType
high-level synthesis,high-level model,symbolic nfa scheduling,formal model checking,desired behavioral dynamic,mips iv,arbitrary sequential constraint,sequential timing,high-level behavior,risc microprocessor,control state,nondeterministic finite automata,control systems,registers,pipelines,hardware,nondeterministic,reduced instruction set computing,high level synthesis,sequencing,functional dependencies,functional dependency,automata,finite automata,scheduling
Nondeterministic finite automaton,Model checking,Nondeterministic algorithm,Computer science,Scheduling (computing),High-level synthesis,Parallel computing,Automaton,Finite-state machine,Real-time computing,Electronic engineering,Reduced instruction set computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
10
4
1063-8210
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
10
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Forrest Brewer141462.95
Steve Haynal2323.59