System-Level Design Exploration
Professor Jan M. Rabaey
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
UC Berkeley
September 26, 1996
Hogan Room, 531 Cory Hall
4:00-5:00 p.m.
Abstract:
The rapid increase in the complexity of systems that are envisioned
in the not too distant future is rapidly outpacing the available
design methodologies. To bridge the developing design gap requires the
emergence of a system design infrastructure and a raise in design
abstraction. In this presentation, we will discuss the nature and the
requirements of design at the so called "conceptual level", i.e. the
pre-specification level. It is at the conceptual stage of the design
process that major decisions and trade-offs are made and where
alternative implementations are explored. Unfortunately, this is most
often done in an ad-hoc way. It will be shown that the most important
element of a design exploration environment is the gathering and
management of information. An environment that can help to provide the
most accurate and relevant information about proposed design
implementations will be presented and analysed, including estimators,
knowledge agents, search and user interfaces. The concept will be
illustrated with a number of examples.