Sang Yong Han

The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society (1994 ~ 2000), Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 215-223, Jan. 2000
10.3745/KIPSTE.2000.7.1.215,   PDF Download:

Abstract

The advancements in technology which have lead to higher and higher levels of integration have required advancements in the methods used in designing VLSI chip. A key to enable a complicated chip design is the use of hierarchy in the design process. Hierarchy organizes the function of a large number of transistors into a particular, easy- to-manage function. For these reasons, hierarchy has been used in the design process of digital functions for many years. However, there exists differences in a design analysis phase, especially in timing analysis, due to multiple views for the same design. In timing analysis of the hierarchical design, every path is analyzed within partitioned modules independently and the global timing analysis is applied to the whole design considering each module as a single timing component. Therefore, timing results of the hierarchical design could not be same as those of non-hierarchical flat design. In this paper, we formulate the timing problem in the hierarchical design and analyze the possible source of timing differences. We define a new terminology of "consistent result" between different views for the same design. We also propose a new partitioning algorithm to obtain the consistent results. This algorithm helps to enhance the design cycle time.

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