KINDEN: knowledge-based INtelligent VLSI design ENvironment

KINDEN, and experimental ASIC design environment based on a central-object-oriented model base, is described. KINDEN´s approach is a departure from most research in applying artificial intelligence (AI) technology to problems in the VLSI design domain which has typically focused on form of design synthesis or decomposition. KINDEN is a high-level ASIC digital signal-processing (DSP) design system, which enables the user to design a DSP system from a top-level specification. The external VLSI CAD consists of commercial CAD, including Mentor and Cadence on Apollo workstation and academic CAD tools on SUN workstation. The in-house tools are being developed on SUN and CRAY supercomputer. The applications developed around the central model-base retrieve and store the design data through the callable C interface. In addition, the external CAD tool databases are supported via EDIF translators, through which the applications can read/write in EDIF