Development of a High-Level Design Space Exploration Methodology

ion level and optimization potential. design space abstraction level layout level behavioral level register-transfer level logic level optimization potential 2 cost estimation step into the design loop (called estimation design loop in figure 2). Therefore, an evaluation of transformation quality is already done within behavioral synthesis. Figure 2 shows the integration of our methodology into the classical design level view. Figure 3 gives an overview on the entire design environment developed at the University of Tübingen [GeEiHa96] and shows the integration of the high-level transformation task in the design flow. Starting point of our investigations is a specification of a system in terms of ANSI-C code, outcome is a register-transfer level implementation of the design parts identified for hardware realization. There exist several backends which allow to pass the register-transfer level design to several commercial and non-commercial lower-level synthesis tools. Regarding the ..