Map Maintenance for Electronic Design Automation
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Solution Overview
Problem
In the iterative electronic design process, maintaining a accurate mapping between a test bench and a test set generator is challenging, especially when design modifications occur, as conventional tools require user intervention to update the map, leading to inefficiencies and potential errors.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves maintaining user-modified portions of the map by matching design elements with corresponding elements in a graph representation, allowing for updates or replacements of map sections to reflect design changes, and adding a legend to designate user-modified sections, ensuring that these sections are preserved during iterative design flows.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional tools are used to update the map between test bench and test set generator, then the map can be updated to reflect design changes, but user intervention is required which leads to inefficiencies and potential errors
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically detects design modifications and updates the corresponding map sections between test bench and test set generator without requiring user intervention. The tool self-updates the mapping by comparing current design elements with stored references, eliminating manual maintenance efforts while maintaining accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors design changes and provides feedback to automatically trigger map updates. When design modifications are detected, the system feeds this information back to the map maintenance process, which then automatically adjusts the mapping to reflect current design state, ensuring accuracy without manual intervention.
2Productivity
If the map is automatically updated to reflect design changes, then manual intervention is reduced, but there is a risk of updating user-modified sections incorrectly
Solution Approach 1:
The map is divided into distinct sections: automatically generated sections and user-modified sections. The system segments the map maintenance process to apply different update strategies to each section type, preserving user modifications while automatically updating generated sections, thus maintaining both productivity and reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
Different update behaviors are applied to different parts of the map based on their origin. User-modified sections receive protective handling to preserve customizations, while automatically generated sections receive full automatic updates. This local differentiation ensures that user intent is respected while maintaining efficiency in automated areas.
3Reliability
If the entire map is replaced to ensure accuracy, then the map reflects current design, but all user modifications are lost requiring re-entry
Solution Approach 1:
User-modified sections are extracted and preserved separately from the automatically generated map sections. When the map needs updating, only the generated sections are regenerated and merged back with the preserved user sections, avoiding complete replacement and preventing loss of user modifications.
Solution Approach 2:
User modifications are identified and protected in advance before automatic updates are performed. The system preliminarily marks user-modified sections to prevent their overwriting, ensuring that when automatic updates occur, user customizations are preserved and do not need to be re-entered.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of the invention provide for the maintenance of user modified portions of a map between a test bench and a test set generator during an iterative electronic design process. Various implementations of the invention provide for matching sections within a design for an electronic device with corresponding sections in a map between the elements in the design to elements in a graph representation of the design. The matched sections are then compared to determine if any discrepancies exists, such as, for example, if the design has been recently changed. If any discrepancies do exist, then it is determined whether the section of the map can be updated or must be replaced entirely to resolve the discrepancies. Various implementations of the invention provide that the process can be repeated during an iterative design flow such that as the design is modified during the iterative design flow, the map can be updated to reflect the changes.