Functional Path Analysis for High Quality Designs

• Main Authors: Li-Jie Chen, 陳立杰
• Other Authors: Sy-Yen Kuo
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/w73n7y

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 電機工程學研究所 === 106 === Correctly determining functional relationship between design variables is important in many circuit design steps such as logic synthesis, design verification and test pattern generation. To this end, one important question is whether two structurally related variables form a real functional path or not. Then given a variable and its functional fanin variables, another important question is whether one fanin variable has the controllability to affect the functional paths for other fanin variables. And if it does, which values enable or block other paths — these values can help improve design verifiability and testability. In this work we answer these questions by performing empirical analysis on false path elimination algorithms and provide an efficient approximate algorithm. We then formulate the path controllability problem and propose several algorithms to solve it. Our proposed functional path analysis methods can improve synthesis, verification and test generation effectiveness to produce higher quality designs.