PAPER A Plan-Generation-Evaluation Framework for Design Space Exploration of Digital Systems Design

SUMMARY Modern digital systems design requires us to explore a large and complex design space to find a best configuration which satis-fies design requirements. Such exploration requires a sound representation of design space from which design candidates are efficiently generated, each of which then is evaluated. This paper proposes a plan-generation-evaluation framework which supports a complete process of such design space exploration. The plan phase constitutes a design space of all possible design alternatives by means of a formally defined representation scheme of attributed AND-OR graph. The generation phase generates a set of can-didates by algorithmic pruning of the design space in an attributed AND-OR graph with respect to design requirements as well as architectural con-straints. Finally, the evaluation phase measures performance of design can-didates in a pruned graph to select a best one. A complete process of cache design is exemplified to show the effectiveness of the proposed framework. key words: design space exploration, plan-generation-evaluation frame-work, graph pruning, attributed AND-OR graph 1