Title :
An evolution-based technique for local microcode compaction
Author :
Ahmad, Imtiaz ; Dhodhi, Muhammad K. ; Saleh, Kassem A.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Kuwait Univ., Safat, Kuwait
fDate :
29 Aug-1 Sep 1995
Abstract :
In this paper we present a variant of the simulated evolution technique for local microcode compaction. The simulated evolution is a general optimization method based on an analogy with the natural selection process in biological evolution. The proposed technique combines simulated evolution with list scheduling, in which simulated evolution is used to determine suitable priorities which lead to a good solution by applying list scheduling as a decoding heuristic. The proposed technique is an effective method that yields good results without problem-specific parameter tuning on test problems. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique by comparing it with the existing microcode compaction techniques for randomly generated data dependency graphs. The proposed scheme offers considerable improvement in the number of microinstructions compared with the existing techniques with comparable cpu time
Keywords :
firmware; genetic algorithms; microprogramming; scheduling; decoding heuristic; list scheduling; microcode compaction; microinstructions; optimization method; simulated evolution; Biological system modeling; Character generation; Compaction; Computational modeling; Decoding; Evolution (biology); Genetic algorithms; Genetic mutations; Optimization methods; Scheduling algorithm;
Conference_Titel :
Design Automation Conference, 1995. Proceedings of the ASP-DAC '95/CHDL '95/VLSI '95., IFIP International Conference on Hardware Description Languages. IFIP International Conference on Very Large Scal
Conference_Location :
Chiba
Print_ISBN :
4-930813-67-0
DOI :
10.1109/ASPDAC.1995.486395