Evolution of Paradigm Shifts in the Automated Design Process of Digital Circuits

In this paper, we postulate “re-use” and not “synthesis” as driving force for productivity increase, confirm that postulate by analysis of semi-custom-design and RTL Synthesis, and derive from that postulate the next paradigm shift in the automated design process: Automated TLM Design: Manual architecture design on transaction level based on transaction level IP models and automated generation of RTL code by mapping the TLMs and their communication to their RTL counterparts, also available in the IP libraries.