Specification-driven Design of Custom Hardware in HOP

  • Ganesh C. Gopalakrishnan
  • Richard M. Fujimoto
  • Venkatesh Akella
  • N. S. Mani
  • Kevin N. Smith
Chapter

Abstract

We present a language “Hardware viewed as Objects and Processes” (HOP) for specifying the structure, behavior, and timing of hardware systems. HOP embodies a simple process model for lock-step synchronous processes. Processes may be described both as a black-box and as a collection of interacting sub-processes. The latter can be statically simplified using an algorithm ‘PARCOMP’. PARCOMP symbolically simulates a collection of interacting processes. The advantages claimed for HOP include simple semantics, intuitiveness, high expressive power, and numerous provisions to support easily verifiable designs all the way to VLSI layout.

After introducing HOP, and presenting some of the results obtained from experimenting with the HOP design system, we present the design of a large hardware system (the “Utah Simulation Engine”) currently being developed to speed-up distributed discrete event simulation using Time Warp. Issues in the specification driven design of this system are discussed and illustrated using HOP.

Keywords

Temporal Logic Discrete Event Simulation Parallel Composition Formal Verification High Order Logic 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag New York Inc. 1989

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ganesh C. Gopalakrishnan
    • 1
  • Richard M. Fujimoto
    • 1
  • Venkatesh Akella
    • 1
  • N. S. Mani
    • 1
  • Kevin N. Smith
    • 1
  1. 1.Dept. of Computer ScienceUniversity of Utah Salt Lake CityUtahUSA

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