Synthesis of optimized ASIC DSP systems

Abstract

GAD, a synthesis tool for ASIC (application-specific integrated circuits) DSP (digital signal processing) systems, is presented. Given the signal flowgraph, the required system throughput, and a number of other optimization parameters, GAD produces the gate-level implementation of the system, which is optimized according to the total gate count of the realization. The types of DSP systems targeted are arithmetic datapaths without conditional branches and simple in control. GAD tries to maximize resource sharing during scheduling to reduce cost. A number of cost-saving design techniques for DSP systems have also been encapsulated as independent optimization procedures. GAD is linked to the design of actual silicon through module generators that provide information on the delays, gate counts, and netlists of the modules. Operator types are still limited in GAD. Handling of operations such as round, truncate, and shift are also very much needed. Additional flexibilities are needed for including controls in the system. >