Patent Application
20060123378
The invention relates generally to computer software program products and more particularly to automation of electronic design of semiconductor circuits.
As semiconductor manufacturing has scaled dramatically, the capacity of very large scale integration to hold more functionality has exceeded the productivity of small groups of designers. Growing the number of teams becomes both uneconomical as well as unwieldy, where coordination between the members of a large team cancels out any improvement in throughput. Thus a small highly focused team must individually generate more design functionality, typically done by reusing existing designs. This is referred to as intellectual property reuse.
Problem: To reuse circuits designed by others and apply them to a new purpose has required detailed study of the written documentation and even discussion of assumptions made by the original authors. Generally these circuits must be resynthesized according to the specific application and the latest manufacturing technologies.
Thus what is needed is a method of capturing the knowhow of the original authors and enabling endusers to reuse the circuits in a newer form and integrated with previously unanticipated applications without personal exchange and extensive education for technology transfer. In current reuse scenarios, large quantities of documentation must be written and then understood for synthesizable circuits to be understood enough to be resynthesized and reused by other than the original authors.
Thus it can be appreciated that what is needed is a way to package previously successful synthesized circuits so that functionality can be reused by those unskilled in the art of implementing that specific functionality but appreciating the parameters and specifications of that functionality as a black box or system component.
The present invention is a software program product, system, and method of synthesizing custom semiconductor circuits to meet configurations and specifications desired by the enduser. A system comprising a logic synthesis engine, a configurable synthesizable language description of circuit, a plurality of scripts and configuration files to constrain the logic synthesis engine, a generator to read a database of desired capabilities and emit script and configuration files in a selected and tailored format consistent with a chosen logic synthesis engine, a database of desired circuit configurations and constraints, a transformational program that converts data entered into or selected on an electronic datasheet into a database, an electronic datasheet with fields that are user editable or selectable that describes the functionality of a semiconductor circuit and the choices or ranges which are allowed for a configurable synthesizable language description of said semiconductor circuit. The electronic datasheet with user input also serves as compact and portable documentation of intent, desire, requirement, or achievement.
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The format of the configuration file is also implementation dependent. One possible format for the configuration file may be a comma separated ASCII table where each line contains the definition of one port, timing exception, the selected target technology and other useful information.
The minimum information for each port must include name, type, direction and width. Additional entries depend on the type of the port. The clock period must be added for clock ports. The delay value must be added for all synchronous data inputs and outputs. Asynchronous resets and static inputs do not need any timing information. Timing exceptions are categorized into false paths and multi-cycle paths. It must be possible to specify any valid combination of from, through and to timing points. The timing points can be pins, ports or clocks.
For each specific synthesizable semiconductor intellectual property circuit, a spreadsheet is created that provides description and data about the functionality and capability of the intellectual property corresponding to the nature of a datasheet for a standard electronic component. However, elements of the electronic datasheet are associated with macros when the spreadsheet is opened with a product such as OpenOffice which allows interaction by a user. The user, typically a designer of a larger system on chip, wishes to embed the selected IP functionality into his system on chip design and configure it to integrate with other functions. The user selects a configuration and sets constraints by editing fields on the spreadsheet and saving it under another name. The saved spreadsheet documents his desired results in a database of configuration constraints. The database is read and analyzed by the Script Generator which has selectable output modules according to the electronic design automation (EDA) software vendor chosen by the user for logic synthesis. Thus a selected functional semiconductor intellectual property circuit could be targeted to a plurality of logic synthesis tools by generating a plurality of vendor-specific constraint scripts.
In summary, the present invention presents the user of synthesizable semiconductor intellectual property with an electronic datasheet to control the configuration and constrain the synthesis of a semiconductor electronic circuit.
Herein is disclosed a method of controlling a plurality of logic synthesis tools and a plurality of synthesizable circuit descriptions through a plurality of electronic editable datasheets that present fields enabling a user without deep knowledge of a circuit to specify desired configuration and performance characteristics.
Herein is disclosed a system of building an editable electronic datasheet comprising the steps of describing the functionality of a synthesizable semiconductor circuit, presenting selectable fields and editable values which reflect the valid limits of the synthesizable semiconductor circuit, associating programming code to check consistency between selectable and editable fields and the valid ranges of the synthesizable semiconductor circuit and associating the fields of the datasheet with a database that can be transformed to scripts and files appropriate to a selected logic synthesis tool.
Herein is disclosed a software program product, presenting a choice of logic synthesis tools, and presenting selectable configuration fields, and presenting editable fields, and other information specific to a synthesizable circuit description, the intellectual property, which firstly checks for valid and consistent values selected and entered into its fields, and secondly populates a database which can be read by a number of software modules which in turn emit a plurality of files necessary for the selected logic synthesis tool.
Herein is disclosed a method for specifying, designing, optimizing, and synthesizing a custom intellectual property (IP) core for semiconductor chip manufacturing comprising the steps of firstly selecting said IP core through its associated datasheet, secondly, selecting from a choice or entering data into editable fields of the datasheet, thirdly, saving the information into a database, fourthly, generating a script and associated files according to the logic synthesis tool chosen among the editable fields, and fifthly, calling the logic synthesis to operate on the appropriate files.
Herein is disclosed the generating method comprising the steps of dividing the input data into constraints and implementation directives, constraining the logic synthesis tool to clocks, paths and delays, directing the implementation with compile and report statements, elaborating the design through mapping of circuits to functionality, and finally, compiling the design into a output format.
Herein is disclosed an electronic software program product presenting the appearance of a datasheet with a plurality of editable fields and a stored program for reading the stored values of the spreadsheet and transforming the data into a script customized to the needs of a selected logic synthesis tool.
Herein is disclosed a computer system for describing, specifying, and synthesizing a detailed implementation netlist of a semiconductor electronic circuit comprising: a processing server unit, a client workstation unit, and a computer-readable storage medium encoded with a computer program product which modifies the operation of said computer system by formatting and displaying information and receiving user input by using a client display product from a group consisting of OpenOffice, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox, and browsers to present a file from the group consisting of Portable Document Format, Hypertext Markup Language, Extended Markup Language, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, rich text format, and OpenOffice format and presenting in fixed text and graphic an electronic datasheet describing the functionality of a configurable and synthesizable semiconductor electronic circuit and presenting editable and selectable fields to enable user input on configuring and constraining the synthesis of said synthesizable semiconductor electronic circuit and storing the user preferences on computer-readable storage medium, and generating scripts, parameter files, and instantiation files to control a logic synthesis program product and launching said logic synthesis program product to create and store a detailed implementation netlist on computer-readable storage medium.
Herein is disclosed the method of controlling the synthesis of semiconductor intellectual property by the steps of firstly, describing the functionality and capability of a synthesizable module in an electronic datasheet, secondly, creating editable tables and fields to represent configuration choices available to the user, thirdly, creating editable tables and fields to represent constraints on the performance of the configured module, fourthly, checking for consistency between the chosen configuration and the desired constraints on performance to be applied to one logic synthesis tool chosen from the group of Synopsys Design Compiler, Symplicity Synplify, Cadence Encounter, and Mentor Graphics Catapult, fifthly creating a synthesis script to attain the specified configuration and desired constraints on performance.
Herein is disclosed that the electronic datasheet may be used with or without successful synthesis and even with errors or conflicts displayed in error notation as a method of communicating to IP Vendors or design team members a desired outcome, or requirement for enhancement, or problem in implementation without transmitting a lengthy document or large database by the steps of editing an electronic datasheet, storing the selected values and constraints, and storing and transmitting it without the associated voluminous semiconductor IP files. Bugs and enhancement requests can be filed by sending the electronic datasheet to the authors or support teams. Coordination across global borders can be done by smaller files.
This paragraph discloses an embodiment of the invention's script generator in specifying the input data and the expected generated commands. The input data is divided into constraints and implementation directives. It is EDA vendor neutral. The constraints contain information about clocks, paths and delays. The implementation directives contain compile and report statements using the constraints to implement the IP (run synthesis). While the constraints are different for every IP and even every IP instance, the implementation directives are the same. For the rest of the document, the syntax of generated commands is based on Synopsys SDC format. For any other synthesizer, the syntax must be adopted appropriately.
The following specification is at a level of abstraction enabling one skilled in the art of object oriented programming to convert the specified inputs in tables to the specified outputs in a script file.
The timing report allows to check whether all timing constraints are met.
The foregoing description of the embodiments of the invention are to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive, the scope of the invention being indicated by the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description, and all changes that come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims therefore are intended to be embraced therein. The embodiment described is selected to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application to thereby enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as suited to the particular purpose contemplated. In particular, Applicants contemplate that functional implementation of invention described herein may be implemented equivalently in hardware, software, firmware, and/or other available functional components or building blocks. Other variations and embodiments are possible in light of the above teachings, and it is thus intended that the scope of the invention not be limited by this Detailed Description, but rather by claims following.
