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Abstract

Investigating the temporal behavior of digital circuits is a crucial step in system design, usually done via analog or digital simulation. Analog simulators like SPICE iteratively solve the differential equations characterizing the circuits components numerically. Although unrivaled in accuracy, this is only feasible for small designs, due to the high computational effort even for short signal traces. Digital simulators use digital abstractions for predicting the timing behavior of a circuit. Besides static timing analysis, which performs corner-case analysis of critical path delays only, dynamic timing analysis provides per-transition timing information in signal traces. In this paper, we advocate a novel approach, which generalizes digital traces to traces consisting of sigmoids, each parameterized by threshold crossing time and slope. What is needed to compute the output trace of a gate is a transfer function, which determines the parameters of the output sigmoids given the parameters of the input sigmoids. Harnessing the power of artificial neural networks (ANN), we implement such transfer functions via ANNs. Using inverters and NOR as the elementary gates in a prototype implementation of a specifically tailored simulator, we demonstrate that our approach operates substantially faster than an analog simulator, while offering better accuracy than a digital simulator.

Details

1009240
Business indexing term
Identifier / keyword
Title
Signal Prediction for Digital Circuits by Sigmoidal Approximations using Neural Networks
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Dec 8, 2024
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-12-10
Milestone dates
2024-12-08 (Submission v1)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
10 Dec 2024
ProQuest document ID
3142727956
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/signal-prediction-digital-circuits-sigmoidal/docview/3142727956/se-2?accountid=208611
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Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-12-11
Database
2 databases
  • ProQuest One Academic
  • ProQuest One Academic