Automated component adaptation by forced simulation

Embedded systems are often designed by experienced designers by interfacing appropriate programmable components to a microprocessor to meet particular design requirements. However, during automated synthesis of these systems, reuse of programmable components hardly takes place. The primary reason is the lack of algorithms that can perform component adaptation like a human designer. In this paper, we present an algorithm based on a new simulation relation called forced simulation to perform automatic component adaptation to match the component to a specific design function. We illustrate the algorithm by adapting Intel's programmable interval timer to behave as an interrupt on terminal count function.