Logic optimization on a concurrent processing computer

Optimization of combinational logic plays an important role in the automatic synthesis of integrated circuits, often called silicon compilation. The optimization program rewrites a given set of boolean expressions in such a way that, after mapping the expressions onto a set of library cells, an optimal result is obtained. This optimality can be in terms of area (number of transistors), speed, power consumption or a tradeoff between them. Particular controllers are suitable to be optimized with such a program. A number of packages are developed and described in literature. One of the problems with these packages is the long computer runtime needed for large real world problems. This paper describes the implementation of a logic optimization package on a supermini computer. (The Alliant FX-8) which is able to execute a job concurrently on a number of CPU's. For the authors' application it was necessary to rearrange the program flow in such a way that large parts of the computational work can be done concurrently by different CPU's.<
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