Imposing structure by employing a unified design representation and hardware implementation

A readily accessible and technology independent approach to the structured design of digital systems based on the concept of employing a design representation where each component element has a directly equivalent hardware implementation is presented. Algorithmic state machines (ASM) are used as a vehicle to demonstrate the principle in practice. An example implementation is compared with a number of alternative controller designs based on conventional techniques. Extension to larger scale design tasks is also addressed. The application of the technique to other design representations is discussed. The computer aided design tools required to employ the technique are considered