Evolutionary state assignment for synchronous finite state machines

Abstract

Among other important aspects, finite state machines represent a powerful way for synchronising hardware components so that these components may cooperate in the fulfilment of the main objective of the hardware design. In this paper, we propose to optimally solve the state assignment NP-complete problem, which is inherent to designing any synchronous finite state machines using evolutionary computations. This is motivated by to reasons: first, finite state machines are very important in digital design and second, with an optimal state assignment one can physically implement the state machine in question using a minimal hardware area and reduce the propagation delay of the machine output signals. © Springer-Verlag 2004.