Logic Optimization - Introduction

Introduction

With the advent of logic synthesis, one of the biggest challenges faced by the Electronic design automation(EDA) industry was to find the best netlist representation of the given design description. While two-level logic optimization had long existed in the form of the Quine–McCluskey algorithm, later followed by the Espresso heuristic logic minimizer, the rapidly improving chip densities, and the wide adoption of HDLs for circuit description, formalized the logic optimization domain as it exists today.

Today, logic optimization is divided into various categories based on two criteria:

Based on circuit representation

  • Two-level logic optimization
  • Multi-level logic optimization

Based on circuit characteristics

  • Sequential logic optimization
  • Combinational logic optimization

While a two-level circuit representation of circuits strictly refers to the flattened view of the circuit in terms of SOPs (sum-of-products) — which is more applicable to a PLA implementation of the design — a multi-level representation is a more generic view of the circuit in terms of arbitrarily connected SOPs, POSs (product-of-sums), factored form etc. Logic optimization algorithms generally work either on the structural (SOPs, factored form) or functional (BDDs, ADDs) representation of the circuit.

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