Papyrus: a history-based VLSI design process management system

摘要

This paper describes the design and implementation of a VLSIndesign process management system called Papyrus, which is built upon anhistory-based design process model that supports both routine andnexploratory VLSI design processes. Emphasis of this paper is put on thendescriptions of Papyrus's basic data models, design decisions, andnimplementation details. The operational prototype features a transparentndynamic load balancing scheme to exploit the computation power ofnnetworked workstations, an atomicity-guarantee mechanism to preserve thenhigh-level abstraction of the design task construct, an interactivendesign-history manipulation facility, and a set of storage managementntechniques to reduce the storage overhead entailed by the singlenassignment update semantics, which is crucial to the support of thenso-called rework mechanism. This system also embodies an innovativenhistory-based meta-data inference scheme that automates many previouslynuser-responsible design data management functions