VLSI Systems and Computations

The book is divided into nine sections: Invited Papers. Six distinguished researchers from industry and academia presented invited papers. Models of Computation. The papers in this section deal with abstracting the properties of VLSI circuits into models that can be used to analyze the chip area, time or energy required for a particular computation. Complexity Theory. This section shows how computations can be analyzed to obtain bounds on the resources (chip area, time, energy) required to perform some computation. The last paper in this section is a light-hearted reminder that complexity theories must acknowledge reality. Layout Theory and Algorithms. Papers in this section describe ways to route wires that connect together different circuits on a chip. This topic is of importance in computer-aided design, but also relates to the complexity of circuit layouts. Languages and Verification. This section presents several results on the specification and verification of circuits and of entire systems. The large number of communicating processes in some VLSI architectures must be designed methodically to insure proper operation. Special-Purpose Architectures. This section deals with systolic computing architectures and their application to areas such as signal processing. Multiplier Designs. The problem of designing an efficient multiplier is of bothmore » practical and theoretical interest. An important application for multipliers is in signal processing. Processors. Two papers in this section describe new designs for single-chip general-purpose computers whose architecture is influenced by VLSI design opportunities. Systems and Processors. This section contains papers describing frameworks for entire systems, such as parallel processing arrays and content-addressable memories.« less