Fast discrete function evaluation using decision diagrams

Patrick C. McGeer, Kenneth L. McMillan, Alexander Saldanha, Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Patrick Scaglia

Abstract: An approach for fast discrete function evaluation based on multi-valued decision diagrams (MDD) is proposed. The MDD for a logic function is translated into a table on, which function evaluation is performed by a sequence of address lookups. The value of a function for a given input assignment is obtained with at most one lookup per input. The main application is to cycle-based logic simulation of digital circuits, where the principal difference from other logic simulators is that only values of the output and latch ports are computed. Theoretically, decision-diagram based function evaluation offers orders-of-magnitude potential speedup over traditional logic simulation methods. In practice, memory bandwidth becomes the dominant consideration on large designs. We describe techniques to optimize usage of the memory hierarchy.

External IDs:dblp:conf/iccad/McGeerMSSS95