Formalization of Logic Design of the Register Components in Discrete Systems

Discrete hardware design involves at a certain stage the logic design of three types of components: functional components (combinational logic networks), operational components (registers), and control components (automata) [1]. Control automata design has been developed in considerable detail, while formal (and thus computer-aided) register design still involves difficulties, despite its apparent simplicity. In practice, register design uses various flipflops as storage elements, and each type of flipflops can be implemented by dozens of different logic circuits with different reliability characteristics and optimization options. Moreover, writing data to a register may involve more than ten different register operations. The designer thus has to choose the hardware solution from a large number of options, allowing for the time characteristics of the input signals, as well as requirements for speed, cost-efficiency, reliability, etc.