The mapping of logic designs into a very large scale hardware simulator

The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of the ratio cut algorithm used in conjunction with a multistage heuristic in addressing very-large-scale partitioning problems. A very-large-scale system may contain several million gates. To achieve an optimal mapping of such a system onto a fixed hierarchy hardware accelerator presents a formidable challenge to even the fastest computing engines currently available. The authors describe the application of a divide-and-conquer heuristic coupled with the algorithm that solves the problem under a variety of constraints. The goal of this approach is to minimize the communication cost in the hierarchy. The authors describe experiments with designs containing up to two million gates, and demonstrate that the approach decreased communication costs by a factor of two or more, when compared with other approaches. This approach enables the hardware simulator to perform approximately three billion gate evaluations/s, or approximately 200 million event evaluations in an event-driven simulator, using a 6% activity rate.<<ETX>>