HAL III: function level hardware logic simulation

A function-level hardware simulator, HAL III, is described. HAL III can simulate a circuit model written by a register transfer level language FDL without translating it into gate level. It adopts parallel, pipeline, and flexible FDL evaluation architectures, and uses level sort and event-driven algorithms at register transfer level. HAL III is more than 10000 times faster than conventional gate-level software simulators in the case of 31 processors used. HAL III can be expanded to 127 processors. HAL III can also be used as a fault simulator. Its simulation speed can be estimated more than a hundred times faster than software simulators. HAL III has been successfully used in practical VLSI designs.<
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