Defining and Implementing a Multilevel Design Representation with Simulation Applications

A design representation that incorporates descriptions at more than one level of abstraction is called a multilevel representation. This paper describes a multilevel representation which includes behavioral and structural levels of description, and a multilevel analysis aid, called timing abstraction, which extracts timing information from a structural design and adds it to a behavior level description. With this design aid, alternate implementations of the same behavior, generated using the CMU-DA synthesis software, can be compared using a behavior level simulator. The timing accuracy is that of the microcode implementation, while the speed of the simulation is that of a behavior level simulator.