Compiling Esterel into Better Circuits

An Esterel compiler for large control-dominated systems

Embedded hard real-time software systems often need finegrained parallelism and precise control of timing, things typical real-time operating systems do not provide. The Esterel language has both, but compiling large Esterel programs has been challenging, producing either needlessly slow or large code. This paper presents the first Esterel compiler able to compile large Esterel programs into fa...

Constructive Analysis of Cyclic Circuits ( EDTC , Paris , March 1996 )

Traditionally, circuits with combinational loops are found only in asynchronous designs. However, combinational loops can also be useful for synchronous circuit design. Combinational loops can arise from high-level language behavioral compiling, and can be used to reduce circuit size. We provide a symbolic algorithm that detects if a sequential circuit with combinational loops exhibits standard...

Compiling Esterel

Compiling Esterel into Static Discrete-Event Code

Executing concurrent specifications on sequential hardware is important for both simulation of systems that are eventually implemented on concurrent hardware and for those most conveniently described as a set of concurrent processes. As with most forms of simulation, this is easy to do correctly but difficult to do efficiently. Solutions such as preemptive operating systems and discrete-event s...

Multiclock Esterel: A Reactive Framework for Asynchronous Design

Synchronous circuit design is supported by a wide range of design automation tools both at academic and industrial scales. Correctness of synchronous circuits is very much dependent on the accuracy of the distribution of clocks. Hence, analysis and characterization of the clocks has been one of the priority areas of research in synchronous circuit design. With increases in clock frequency the d...