Functional Decomposition of Composite Finite State Machines

Abstract

. Many of the multiway general decompositions of finite state machines (FSMs) proposed in the past are concerned with the cost reduction of the eventual logic level implementation. In this paper we propose a new method of decomposing a new FSM model called Composite Finite State Machines (CFSMs), which is ideal for use in a microprocessor based system design environment. Our algorithm partitions the CFSM of the design functionality into a set of interacting CFSMs such that the partitioned CFSMs represent the different sub-functions of the design specification. Unlike existing FSM decomposition schemes, our algorithm is bottom-up and is able to determine suitable devices from a design library to implement the partitioned sub-functions. It is an extension of the behavioural mapping procedure proposed in [12] which addressed the implementability question for a single design function by mapping to a particular device, whereas our algorithm performs a behavioural mapping between a design fu..