Automatic hierarchical design: fantasy or reality?
The debate regarding the design of integrated systems, flat versus hierarchically, is almost as old as VLSI design itself. Through the years experts have predicted that future generations of design automation tools would have to adopt a strictly hierarchical scheme for mastering algorithmic and logistic complexity. However, the steady improvement of tools and algorithms and the desire to push integrated circuit performance to the ultimate extremes has pushed the flat design style into the multi-million gate domain. Will this development continue, or will hierarchy finally win? The panel will discuss the different views on this topic and explore possible options for future design and tool flows. In particular, the panel will address questions related to verification, system design, logic synthesis, and physical design.