A Knowledge-Based System-Level Construction Methodology

The synthesis of mixed analog/digital systems is a relatively complex task because of the heterogeneity of these systems. This paper describes how major principles of expert systems for construction tasks can be used to deal with the design space of mixed analog/digital systems at the system level: 1) conception-hierarchies can represent the system level in an elegant way, which views the partitioning problem as a well-de ned task; 2) constraint nets support the distribution of limited design resources. Both together with design methodologies for the subblocks and strategies allow the construction of such systems. This is su cient to make important design decisions at system level, like the determination of sample frequencies and bit widths, for example.