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Scientific Reports:

D. Öhlinger:
"Involution Tool";
Report No. TUW-278633, 2018.



English abstract:
The timing behavior of complex digital circuits is very hard to predict. Using analog models for simulation is, especially for larger circuits, too slow. Therefore, a digital abstraction is required in order to ensure feasible simulations.
A promising basis for such a digital abstraction is the involution model, which differs from other delay models in that it is faithful. A model is faithful if problems, which can be solved with a real physical circuit, can be solved in the model and vice versa. Since the involution model mainly exists on paper, however, the goal of this Bachelorīs thesis is to provide a tool which makes the model applicable. The tool implements the delay
model in the popular simulation platform ModelSim, which facilitates timing predictions of arbitrary circuit designs. It also compares the results to other models and analog simulations.
The comparison of the involution model with the built-in delay method showed significant performance improvements in terms of power estimation and trace modeling accuracy. For a circuit consisting of inverters, the power estimation error could be decreased from approximately 53% to 15%.

Keywords:
Digital timing simulation, design tools, delay models, pulse degradation, glitch propagation


Electronic version of the publication:
https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_278633.pdf


Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.