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|              M. A. Sc. Thesis                |
| Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering |
|           University of Victoria             |
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AUTHORS: M.A. Escalante

TITLE:   Bus Arbitration Modelling and Design in DAME:
         An Expert Microprocessor-based-systems Designer

ABSTRACT:
The automation of computer hardware design has received
considerable attention in recent years. Expert systesm, that
incorporate explicit domain knowledge into proble-solving
programs, have been successfully applied in design problems.
DAME (Design Automation of Microprocessor-based systems using
an Expert system approach) is a system capable of designing
microprocessor-based systems from original specifications.
In this thesis, the bus arbitration interface design module,
a module of the DAME designer, is presented to illustrate
the design process in DAME.

The design philosophy followed by DAME requires that components
include reference to abstractions of their interfacing
capabilities. The design rules utilize this information to
produce an abstract design which is subsequently instantiated.
In particular, components are functionally modeled by their
capabilities. These capabilities follow protocols to guarantee
the proper communication with other devices. Actions are the
elementary operations that describe protocol sequences.
Finally signals are the agents that convey the actions.

The interface design strategy in DAME divides the interface
problem into subproblems that deal with the component capabilities
and applies generic rules that instantiate an abstract design
with the particular information from the participating
components. The abstract interface design is carried out
by merging action graphs that represent the involved protocols.
The methodology outlined above is illustrated through an example
involving the VMEbus.