Application-driven design automation for microprocessor design

ADAS is an Application-driven Design Automation System for microprocessor design. The goal of ADAS is to automatically explore the design space and synthesize a single chip VLSI processor from a high-level specification of the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) written in a subject of standard Prolog. Our idea is to develop a design automation system which considers both microprocessor hardware design and design of the corresponding language compiler concurrently. Benchmark programs are used to motivate design decisions and optimize performance. Compiler optimizations are considered during the design of hardware. Our system spans language design compiler design, instruction set design, microarchitecture, and VLSI implementation. Another goal of our project is to determined the feasibility of applying formal methodology to design automation and the usefulness of formal syntax and semantics to define the meaning of specifications. We have exercised our system on a real industrial example, the TDY-43 processor