This award supports Dr. Giovanni De Micheli of Stanford University to collaborate in computer science research with Dr. Raul Camposano of the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD) in Sankt Agustin, Germany. They are linking their research efforts in the process of transforming high level, behavioral descriptions of digital hardware into logic- level specifications. In particular, they plan to enhance the front-end of the "Olympus" synthesis system, developed at Stanford, by providing a VHDL input, as well as a synthesis policy for VHDL. This effort will benefit tremendously from Dr. Camposano's experience with VHDL models; he will take primary responsibility for this part of the project. Both of them will work on more efficient algorithms for constraint-based synthesis of concurrent hardware, such as the scheduling problem for large scale circuits, where well known techniques are inefficient. They also plan to work separately but cooperatively on hardware designs, with the goal of synthesizing four to six real designs between the two sites. This proposal joins the efforts of two well- respected researchers in the design automation community in a project that can have significant impact on progress in electronic system design. The enhancement to the Stanford Olympus synthesis system will make it available to the mainstream of electronic system designers. Improving algorithms for constraint-based synthesis will result in more efficient ways to design systems.
