Characterization and parameterized random generation of digital circuits

The development of new Field-Programmed, Mask-Programmed and Laser-Programmed Gate Array architectures is hampered by the lack of realistic test circuits that exercise both the architectures and their automatic placement and routing algorithms. In this paper, we present a method and a tool for generating parameterized and realistic random circuits. To obtain the realism, we propose a set of graph-theoretic characteristics that describe a physical netlist, and have built a tool that can measure these characteristics on existing circuits. The generation tool uses the characteristics as constraints in the random circuit generation. To validate the quality of the generated netlists, parameters that are not specified in the generation are compared with those of real circuits, and with those of "random" graphs.