Three-level decomposition with application to PLDs

Abstract

A scheme for programmable logic array (PLA) decomposition that consists of one level of PLAs followed by a second level of simple two-input logic gates is presented. The propagation delay is therefore the sum of the delay through one level of PLA and one level of two-input gates. Since the delay through a two-input gate is significantly less than that through a PLA, the timing performance of the new scheme is generally superior to those of earlier PLA decomposition schemes. The sizes of the PLAs used depend on the choice of the two-input gates. An algorithm is presented that chooses the functionality of the gates such that the areas of the first-level PLAs are minimized, further improving performance. The new decomposition scheme was developed for the automatic programming of a programmable logic device (PLD) which had basically a three level architecture. The functional unit for such a PLD is described and the application of the algorithm to the programming of these functional units is discussed. Experimental results show that the new scheme significantly reduces the area over the single PLA implementation. >