Decomposition of Sequential Behavior UsingInterface Specification and Complementation
Kamlesh Rath, Venkatesh Choppella, Steven Johnson · VLSI design · 1995
Decomposition of system behavior along functional boundaries into interacting sequential components is a key step in top‐down system design. In this paper, we present sequential decomposition, a method for factoring sequential components from a system specification based on interface specifications of the components. The resulting components can be independently synthesized, or realized using off‐the‐shelf components. We introduce interface specification language (ISL), based on finite‐state machine semantics, to specify the input/output behavior of synchronous sub‐systems. A component is factored from a system by embedding an implementation of the complement of its interface into the system description. The composition of a machine with its complement is shown to be isomorphic to the machine, and the composition of a machine with an implementation of its component is shown to be a safe interaction. We apply sequential decomposition to a non‐trivial example, a special‐purpose computer with Scheme programming language primitives as its instructions.