Sequential multi-valued network simplification using redundancy removal

Abstract

We introduce a scheme to simplify a multi-valued network using redundancy removal techniques. Recent methods for binary redundancy removal avoid the use of state traversal. Additionally, one method finds multiple compatible redundancies simultaneously. We extend these powerful advances in the field of binary redundancy removal to perform redundancy removal for multi-valued networks. First we perform a one-hot encoding of all the multi-valued variables of the design. Multi-valued variables are written out as binary variables, using this one-hot encoding. At the end of this step, we have a binary network which is equivalent to the multi-valued network module encoding. Next binary redundancy removal is invoked on the resulting network. In the case a binary signal s/sub i/ is determined to be stuck-at-0 redundant this means that the multi-valued signal s can never take on a value i. Further if the binary signal s/sub i/ is determined to be stuck-at-1 redundant, this means that the multi-valued signal s takes on a constant value i. All redundant binary signals are recorded in a file. The original multi-valued network is modified based on the binary redundancies thus computed. Initial experiments using this technique show a 10-20% reduction in the size of the multi-valued description.