A Rule-Based System for Optimizing Combinational Logic

1 January 1985

journal article
Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Design & Test of Computers

Vol. 2 (4) , 22-32
https://doi.org/10.1109/mdt.1985.294719

Abstract

SOCRATES is a rule-based expert system that optimizes combinational logic for a specific target technology. The system performs substitutions of equivalent gate configurations, thereby reducing the overall area of the implementation and improving the speed of the design. A control mechanism uses various backup strategies to choose the rules applied to the circuit. Users can easily extend the library of transformation rules through a rule generation module that automatically encodes rules and inserts them into the knowledge base. Timing constraints placed on the circuit can be modified to allow the designer to explore a large design space in a matter of minutes. Implementations generated by the system are comparable in area and speed to circuits designed by experts.

Keywords

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