An interactive fuzzy CAD tool

Abstract

A text-based CAD program helps designers build systolic VLSI arrays for real-time control applications directly from a set of fuzzy descriptive rules. The most useful features of our interactive fuzzy CAD tool are the following: it gives designers direct access to VLSI circuits as a means to implement fuzzy control systems; its linguistic input format is heuristic in design and easy to revise; it can adapt to most text-based VLSI design tools such as VHDL; it generates a testing file that performs hardware simulation, facilitating revision prior to fabrication; and it generates a parameter file that simplifies rule revision by retaining all the linguistic data of a particular fuzzy controller design. This article focuses on the automation of dedicated hardware design for fuzzy controllers. Our CAD tool facilitates the generation of a physical design, or layout, for a given fuzzy controller, and ASICs may be fabricated from this layout. The simplicity and regular structure of the systolic array makes it a good hardware architecture for the automation process, though of course, other hardware architecture designs are available.