VLSI Design Environments investigates design alternatives such as object oriented data modelling. The difficulty of automating chip architecture designs is caused by the complexity of the problem. The explosion of design decions make a heuristic approach necessary. PLAYOUT aims at the solution of system problems based on hierarchy, top-down planning, silicon complier presentations, advances in encoding logic synthesis and a microarchitecre and logic optimization system. PLAYOUT supports the physical design from entering the structure of digital systems to the generation of the mask. The concept for autonomous tools with a clear interface to the network description and the simple interface to the graphics is presented. This enables the designer to have a great influence on the configuration of the placement of the schematic diagram. Substantial progress is being made in behavioural and logic synthesis, both of which depend upon specifications.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, L'Aquila, Italy, July 7-18, 1986

Aimed primarily for undergraduate students pursuing courses in VLSI design, the book emphasizes the physical understanding of underlying principles of the subject. It not only focuses on circuit design process obeying VLSI rules but also on technological aspects of Fabrication. VHDL modeling is discussed as the design engineer is expected to have good knowledge of it. Various Modeling issues of VLSI devices are focused which includes necessary device physics to the required level. With such an in-depth coverage and practical approach practising engineers can also use this as ready reference. Key features: Numerous practical examples. Questions with solutions that reflect the common doubts a beginner encounters. Device Fabrication Technology. Testing of CMOS device BiCMOS Technological issues. Industry trends. Emphasis on VHDL.

This textbook, originally published in 1987, broadly examines the software required to design electronic circuitry, including integrated circuits. Topics include synthesis and analysis tools, graphics and user interface, memory representation, and more. The book also describes a real system called "Electric."

Contents:A New Way to Acquire Knowledge (H-Y Wang)An SPN Knowledge Representation Scheme (J Gattiker & N Bourbakis)On the Deep Structures of Word Problems and Their Construction (F Gomez)Resolving Conflicts in Inheritance Reasoning with Statistical Approach (C W Lee)Integrating High and Low Level Computer Vision for Scene Understanding (R Malik & S So)The Evolution of Commercial AI Tools: The First Decade (F Hayes-Roth)Reengineering: The AI Generation — Billions on the Table (J S Minor Jr)An Intelligent Tool for Discovering Data Dependencies in Relational DBS (P Gavaskar & F Golshani)A Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) Tool to Assist Traffic Flow (B Das & S Bayles)A Study of Financial Expert System Based on Flops (T Kaneko & K Takenaka)An Associative Data Parallel Compilation Model for Tight Integration of High Performance Knowledge Retrieval and Computation (A K Bansal)Software Automation: From Silly to Intelligent (J-F Xu et al.)Software Engineering Using Artificial Intelligence: The Knowledge Based Software Assistant (D White)Knowledge Based Derivation of Programs from Specifications (T Weight et al.)Automatic Functional Model Generation for Parallel Fault Design Error Simulations (S-E Chang & S A Szygenda)Visual Reverse Engineering Using SPNs for Automated Diagnosis and Functional Simulation of Digital Circuits (J Gattiker & S Mertoguno)The Impact of AI in VLSI Design Automation (M Mortazavi & N Bourbakis)The Automated Acquisition of Subcategorizations of Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives from Sample Sentences (F Gomez)General Method for Planning and Rendezvous Problems (K I Trovato)Learning to Improve Path Planning Performance (P C Chen)Incremental Adaptation as a Method to Improve Reactive Behavior (A J Hendriks & D M Lyons)An SPN-Neural Planning Methodology for Coordination of Multiple Robotic Arms with Constrained Placement (N Bourbakis & A Tascillo) Readership: Computer scientists, artificial intelligence practitioners and robotics users. keywords:

Computer-aided design syst,ems have become a big business. Advances in technology have made it commercially feasible to place a powerful engineering workstation on every designer's desk. A major selling point for these workstations is the computer aided design software they provide, rather than the actual hardware. The trade magazines are full of advertisements promising full menu design systems, complete with an integrated database (preferably "relational"). What does it all mean? This book focuses on the critical issues of managing the information about a large design project. While undeniably one of the most important areas of CAD, it is also one of the least understood. Merely glueing a database system to a set of existing tools is not a solution. Several additional system components must be built to create a true design management system. These are described in this book. The book has been written from the viewpoint of how and when to apply database technology to the problems encountered by builders of computer-aided design systems. Design systems provide an excellent environment for discovering how far we can generalize the existing database concepts for non-commercial applications. This has emerged as a major new challenge for database system research. We have attem pted to avoid a "database egocentric" view by pointing out where existing database technology is inappropriate for design systems, at least given the current state of the database art. Acknowledgements.