Electronic design creation through architectural exploration

摘要

An electronic design is created through a machine implemented method that includes evolutionarily generating candidate architectures for the electronic design, with the evolutionary generation of the candidate architectures being periodically guided by the designer, and generating an implementation specification for the design in accordance with a selected one of the evolutionarily generated candidate architectures. In one embodiment, the candidate architectures are evolutionarily generated on different abstraction levels, and the generated candidate architectures on the different abstraction levels may be selectively regenerated as often as desired by the designer. In one embodiment, the periodic guidance includes periodic modification of the constraints on the electronic design. In one embodiment, the method further includes facilitating periodic exploration of the electronic design, including the generated candidate architectures, by the designer, to aid the designer in formulating his/her guidance. In one embodiment, the implementation specification of the electronic design is an RTL specification of the electronic design, which may be output in any one of a number of formats, including an implicit FSM format, an explicit FSM format, and a structural netlist format.