Method, design apparatus, and program product for incremental design space exploration

Abstract

A design apparatus generates an optimal design condition by design space exploration. The apparatus including a source code parsing ( 301 ) which parses source code and generates a parse tree, a cluster generation task ( 302 ) which generates clusters based on the parse tree, each of the clusters including a group of source codes which can operate independently, a log file task ( 303 ) which generates a log file based on a structure of the cluster, and a comparison task ( 304 ) which compares a first log file of a previous cluster with a second log file of a current cluster and re-uses previous exploration result based on a comparison result, the first log file being obtained from a previous design space exploration, the second log file being generated from a current operation.

1 . A method for performing incremental exploration of LSI circuits given a behavioral circuit description, comprising method operation of:
 parsing a behavioral LSI description generating unique identifiers for each part of source codes explored independently;   recording a main information of designs being explored so that this information can be retrieved at later explorations;   identifying which parts of the source code have been modified between different exploration runs; and   exploring only parts of the designs which have been affected by manual changes in the source code.   
     
     
         2 . The method according to claim  11 , wherein the method operation includes the generation of a log file where all the necessary information to recover a design generated during an exploration is recorded including the results of a high level synthesis, the attributes applied to the explorable operations, and a cluster contents index. 
     
     
         3 . The method according to claim  11 , wherein the method operation includes a cluster contents index, which is represented in a single unique alpha numerical value, and the contents of a piece of a behavioral description being explored. 
     
     
         4 . The method according to claim  11 , wherein the method operation includes:
 an execution of an exploration in an incremental mode, where the information recorded in the log file is read and the data is loaded into the program; and   re-generation of the data structure based on the information specified in the log file for each valid design created during a previous exploration.   
     
     
         5 . The method according to claim  11 , wherein the method operation includes:
 checking at the designs from a previous exploration before a new design is generated in order to avoid applying the same synthesis directives to a new design being generated.