SPECIAL-PURPOSE VLSI SYNTHESIS TOOLS FOR DIGITAL SIGNAL-PROCESSING ALGORITHMS

Special-purpose silicon compilers are instrumental in making possible efficient implementations of complex digital signal processing systems on a single chip. This paper presents three such tools, each of them adapted to a specific kind of algorithm and throughput range, that gen erate the layout of a VLSI block, based on a fixed target architecture , directly from its high-level specification. Fidys and Genrif respect ively generate recursive LDI and FIR VLSI digital filters, starting fr om behavioral-frequency template specifications. The architecture is a direct one to one mapping from the filter structure. Fidys targets lo w-end and medium-range applications, using bit-serial architecture, wh ereas the bit-parallel architecture in Genrif is better adapted to hig h-end video applications. Cots is a more general-purpose tool that imp lements any C program on a customized microcoded datapath.