Speeding-up Logic Design and Refining Hardware EDA Flow by Exploring Chinese Character based Graphical Representation

Abstract

Electrical design automation (EDA) techniques have deeply influenced the computer hardware design, especially in the field of very large scale Integration (VLSI) circuits. Particularly, the popularity of FPGA, ASIC and SOC applications have been dramatically increased due to the well developed EDA tool chains. Over decades, improving EDA tool in terms of functionality, efficiency, accuracy and intelligence is not only the academic research hot spot, but the industry attempting goal as well. In this paper, a novel perspective is taken to review current mainstream EDA working flow and design methods, aiming to shorten the EDA design periods and simplify the logic design overload significantly. Specifically, three major contributions are devoted. First, a Chinese character based representation system (CCRS), which is used for presenting logical abstract syntax tree, is proposed. Second, the register-transfer-level (RTL) level symbolic description technique for CCRS are introduced to replace traditional text-based programming methods. Finally, the refined EDA design flow based on CCRS is discussed. It is convincing that the graphic non-pure-english based EDA flow could lower the design cost and complexity. As a fundamental trial in this new field, it is confirmative that a lot of following works will make the related EDA development prosperous.