Automated composition of hardware components

Abstract

In order to automate design reuse, methods for composing system components must be developed. The goal of this research is to automate the process of generating interfaces between hardware subsystems. The algorithms presented here can be used to generate a cycle-accurate, synchronous interface between two hardware subsystems given an HDL model of each subsystem. These algorithms have been implemented in the POLARIS hardware composition tool and have been used to generate an interface between a MIPS microprocessor and the SRAM that comprises its secondary cache. Interface generation for the MIPS R4000 is described.