A parametric module design framework and its application to gate-level datapath/DSP module synthesis

The paper presents a parametric module design framework that is suitable for datapath/DSP soft-IP design. This framework is based on the integration of various frequently used parametric module generators. Under this design framework, system or circuit designers specify the structural information of the modules in C++, and then compile and co-simulate with any C/C++ programs/algorithms. Furthermore, they can manually adjust the simulation model whenever necessary. Once the system design is completed, an efficient gate-level Verilog code can soon be generated automatically. By examining the system functionality using high-level language and automatically translating the design entries into gate-level description, we can easily keep our design effort at system level while maintaining a tight consistency between different levels of abstraction. Therefore the proposed framework yields a fast, robust, and cost-effective solution to high-complexity datapath/DSP module design.