General silicon compilation-the knowledge based approach

One of the major difficulties with using computers to automate a design process is that the results are generally a lot poorer than a human designer could achieve. Within the silicon compilation process two stages are generally handled a lot better by human designers. One is the `synthesis´ of the functional or behavioural specification into a structural description and the other is the layout of the design. In order to match the human knowledge put into these stages it is necessary to adopt the use of knowledge based systems (KBS). The use of KBS allows knowledge about design procedures to be stored and then used by the silicon compiler in much the same way as a human would use the same knowledge