Goal-oriented control of VLSI design processes based on fuzzy sets

A formalism for goal-oriented control of VLSI design processes based on fuzzy sets is presented. The formalism solves the problem of inferring relationships between goals, which is an important problem in artificial-intelligence-based design. The focus of attention-a set of design actions which when performed move the design process in a direction consistent with the goals and their priorities-is determined on the basis of the inferred relationships and on user-specified priority orders of goals. The formalism supports an adequate tuning of both the relationships between goals and the existing design actions. Especially, this advantage could not be achieved without making use of the theory of fuzzy sets. The application of the formalism is demonstrated by a detailed example