28th Annual Simulation Symposium
Special purpose array processor for digital logic simulation
Santa Barbara, California
April 25-April 28
ISBN: 0-8186-7091-6
Youngmin Hur, Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA
S.A. Szygenda, Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA
Digital logic and fault simulation of large VLSI circuits is one of the most compute-intensive tasks in digital analysis. This paper describes a special purpose time driven array processor for digital logic simulation. The new architecture uses a massively parallel processing element (PE) array in a SIMD architecture. Compiled event-driven technology and nominal transport delay timing analysis are used. A circuit to be simulated is levelized according to the delay time order at the preprocessing stage and the levelized circuit is mapped into a massively parallel PE array. Circuit comparisons show that the speedup of the new architecture is up to 8 times faster than the MARS accelerator and it can be higher for increased circuit size; while the hardware cost remains low.
Index Terms:
special purpose computers; circuit analysis computing; VLSI; parallel architectures; timing; delays; logic CAD; digital simulation; special purpose array processor; digital logic simulation; fault simulation; large VLSI circuits; compute-intensive tasks; digital analysis; time driven array processor; massively parallel processing element; SIMD architecture; compiled event-driven technology; nominal transport delay timing analysis; delay time order; levelized circuit; massively parallel PE array; MARS accelerator; hardware cost
Citation:
Youngmin Hur, S.A. Szygenda, "Special purpose array processor for digital logic simulation," ss, pp.297, 28th Annual Simulation Symposium, 1995