Digital Commons Network^™

Synthesis Heuristics For Large Asynchronous Sequential Circuits, Robert Judson Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

"Many well-known synthesis procedures for asynchronous sequential circuits produce minimal or near-minimal results, but are practical only for very small problems. These algorithms become unwieldy when applied to "large" circuits with, for example, three or more input variables and twenty or more internal states. New heuristic procedures are described which permit the synthesis of very large machines. Although the resulting designs are generally not minimal, the heuristics are able to produce near-minimal solutions orders of magnitude more rapidly than the minimal algorithms. A method for specifying sequential circuit behavior is presented. Input-output sequences define submachines or modules. When properly interconnected, …