Msthesis

Querying Cir
uits and other Labelled

Graphs
Department of Computer S ien e and Engineering
Indian Institute of Te hnology, Kharagpur

QUERYING CIRCUITS AND OTHER LABELLED GRAPHS
By
Jayanta Majumder
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF SCIENCE
AT
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, KHARAGPUR
WEST BENGAL, INDIA
DECEMBER 2004
Copyright by Jayanta Majumder, 2004

DEPARTMENT OF
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
The undersigned hereby ertify that they have read and re ommend
to the Fa ulty of Graduate Studies for a eptan e a thesis entitled
\Querying Cir uits and other Labelled Graphs" by Jayanta Majumder
in partial fulllment of the requirements for the degree of Master of S ien e.
Dated: De ember 2004
Supervisors:
Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti
Dr. Chittaranjan Mandal
Reader:
Dr. Amit Patra
ii
Date: De ember 2004

Author: Jayanta Majumder
Title: Querying Cir uits and other Labelled Graphs
Department: Computer S ien e and Engineering
Degree: M.S. Convo ation: June Year: 2005
Permission is herewith granted to Indian Institute of Te hnology, Kharagpur to

ir ulate and to have opied for non- ommer ial purposes, at its dis retion, the above
title upon the request of individuals or institutions.
Signature of Author
THE AUTHOR RESERVES OTHER PUBLICATION RIGHTS, AND NEITHER
THE THESIS NOR EXTENSIVE EXTRACTS FROM IT MAY BE PRINTED OR
OTHERWISE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S WRITTEN PERMISSION.
THE AUTHOR ATTESTS THAT PERMISSION HAS BEEN OBTAINED FOR THE
USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL APPEARING IN THIS THESIS (OTHER
THAN BRIEF EXCERPTS REQUIRING ONLY PROPER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IN
SCHOLARLY WRITING) AND THAT ALL SUCH USE IS CLEARLY ACKNOWLEDGED.
iii
To Human Con iousness.
iv
Table of Contents
Table of Contents vi
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
1 Introdu tion 1
1.1 A PR-style Introdu tion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1 Debugging and Verifying Netlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Debugging and Verifying Sequential Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.3 Analyzing Engineering Drawings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.4 Feature Re ognition in Solid Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.5 Opti al Shape/Chara ter Re ognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3 Data Model for SQUARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 Qui k Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.5 Layout of the Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 Mathemati al Tools and Notations 17
2.1 Stru tures : Sets, Tuples, Strings, Relations and Fun tions . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Propositional Predi ate Logi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3 Graphs : Basi Denitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5 Des ribing Semanti s of Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.6 Relational Cal ulus using Binary De ision Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3 The SQUARE Language 27
4 Integrating Appli ations with SQUARE 32
5 Stru tural Query on Cir uits 33
5.1 Ba kground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.2 Reasoning about Netlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
v
5.2.1 Netlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.2.2 Types of Netlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.2.3 Reasoning Problems in Netlist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.2.4 Representation of Netlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.3 Overview of the Netlist Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.3.1 The Netlist Information Model and its Representation . . . . . . . . 46
5.3.2 Integration of SQUARE with the NMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6 The Implementation of SQUARE 52
6.0.3 Algorithmi s and Ar hite ture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.1 Evaluation of the all-paths Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6.2 Evaluation of the Exists-Path Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7 Results 60
8 Con lusion and S ope for Future Work 61
Bibliography 62
vi
List of Tables
vii
List of Figures
1.1 Two graphs (A) representing lo ations and transport links, labelled with
transport modes (B) representing a part of the aquati food hain . . . . . 2
1.2 A NAND gate implementation in CMOS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Some Graph Models in Real World Appli ations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4 Some Typi al Regular Expression Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1 Truth table for NOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2 Common Propositional Binary Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 Truth Table for Common Propositional Binary Operators . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.1 A Labelled Graph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.2 A simple exists-path query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.3 Results of the query in gure 3.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.4 A query involving two exists-path sub-expressions under logi al onjun -
tion, and its exe ution result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.5 A query involving the all-paths expression and its exe ution result . . . . 31
5.1 A Typi al CAD Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2 Two Netlists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.3 Dierent Kinds of Netlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.4 Overview of the NMS System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5.5 Query to print all nets belonging to a y li path not passing through a ip- op. 50
5.6 Query to print all the internal nets in a netlist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5.7 Query to print all su h nets that are not rea hable from a given net through
FET hannels in a transistor netlist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.1 A graph ontext onstru ted for CNF-sat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6.2 An NFA interpreted from a CNF expression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
viii
Chapter 1
Introdu tion
Here we present a study on and a tool for querying and lo ating patterns in labelled graphs.
It may be useful in appli ations where (1) labelled graph stru tures an be asso iated with
or inferred from the domain of appli ation and (2) it makes sense to be able to lo ate and
manipulate interesting portions of those graphs. For the unfamiliar readers, a graph is
an network-like stru ture that represents some kind of onne tivity between some entities
of interest. Many real life situations an be onveniently expressed by network diagrams.
For example, in trying to work out a travel plan we an represent lo ations (eg. ities)
by points and join ertain pairs of those points by lines representing dire t transport links
(Fig. 1.1(A)). We may annotate the lines with the transport modes available, and possibly
with a lot of other details like distan e, ost et . As another example, in modelling a food
hain, we may represent ea h onsidered spe ies as a point and join pairs of points with
arrow-headed lines su h that the spe ies represented by the point at the arrow-head is a
food to the spe ies represented by the point at the arrow-tail (Fig. 1.1(B)). Mathemati al
abstra tion of su h diagrammati representations are alled graphs. In su h point and line
diagrams, a on eptional point is alled alled a vertex and a line is alled an edge. We will
ome to their formal denitions in an abstra t setting later. Graphs an represent a very
wide range of situations and are ommonly used in the design and analysis of engineering
systems. When a graph represents a large entity, nding and fo ussing on a small and inter-
esting part of the graph is often useful. For example when the graph represents a designed
artefa t like an ele troni ir uit or a program, lo ating or even testing the presen e of a
spe ied pattern in it an help in navigating, verifying or possibly debugging the design.
This tool borrows ideas from some household unix tools like awk,sed and lex, and we intend
to provide a similar level of usability as these great forerunners, but unfortunately it an
not be introdu ed very readily. In the book dening awk, The Awk Programming Language,
by Alfred Aho, Brian Kernighan and Peter Weinberger [41℄ , the authors start the rst
1
2
Figure 1.1: Two graphs (A) representing lo ations and transport links, labelled with trans-
port modes (B) representing a part of the aquati food hain
se tion with examples. It was possible be ause the information model that awk a ts upon
is a stream of hara ters or a ommon text le, whi h is so familiar to the target audien e
that it requires little introdu tion. In our ase, even if we expe t the target audien e to be
familiar with graphs, there exists no su h ommon representation of graphs (unlike text)
that we an readily use in an introdu tory example. Indeed graphs an be asso iated with
many ommon databases and information models, but to introdu e a fully running example,
some detailed explanation is required about onguring the tool for the appli ation, whi h
we will ome to at a later stage. So a fully working example is not possible at this stage.
Instead we shall provide a few high level examples, without bothering about the details of
how the example will be integrated with the appli ation data. As a rst example, let us
assume that we have somehow plugged our graph query mat hing tool into the transport
links graph (Fig. 1.1(A)) and want to pose the following query : whi h pairs of lo ations
are onne ted by one or more aeroplane ights and also by a ombination of heli opter and
ferry rides. This translates to the following pattern spe i ation (the leftmost olumn is a
line number and not a part of the query).
1: (and
2: (exists-path (x y) (aeroplane +))
3: (exists-path (x y) ([heli opter ferry℄ + ) )
In the query, the symbols x and y in lines 2 and 3 represent two variables about whi h
the query spe ies some onstraints. There are two onstraints about x and y in lines 2
and 3; the rst one says that there exists a path from x to y whose label sequen e satises
the regular expression (aeroplane + ), i.e. is omposed of one or more edges with an
3
aeroplane label. The + is the positive losure symbol of usual regular expressions. In the
se ond onstraint we state that there exists a path from x to y whose label sequen e satises
the regular expression ([heli opter ferry℄ + ), i.e. the path is omposed of one or more
edges labelled with either heli opter or ferry. The square bra ket [heli opter ferry℄
has similar sense as hara ter lasses of usual regular expressions. The "and" in line 1 is a
logi al onne tive that further enfor es that the onstraints in lines 2 and 3 must both hold
for x and y.
As another example, for a food hain (like in Fig. 1.1(B)) let us pose a query to identify
ompeting spe ies - i.e. the ones who share a prey.
1: (exists (z)
2: (and
3: (exists-path (x z) (true))
4: (exists-path (y z) (true))
5: (not-equal (x y)) ))
In this ase, the regular expression (true) is used, in whi h the label true is a spe ial
one and holds on any edge, by denition. Here the regular expressions are trivial - any
single edge satises the expression (true). This query, when applied on the food hain
graph, onstrains the variables x and y in su h a way that for some spe ies z, both x and y
must be a dire t predator to z, and also x and y are dierent. With a slight modi ation
(by inserting line 6 in the following) we ould ask as to whi h pairs of spe ies ompete (i.e.
share a prey) yet one preys on the other.
1: (exists (z)
2: (and
3: (exists-path (x z) (true))
4: (exists-path (y z) (true))
5: (not-equal (x y))
6: (exists-path (x y) (true)) ))
Please note that we use the logi al onne tives like "and", "or" et . in prex syntax
(unlike their inx usage in the literature and algol family languages), we do this to prevent
unne essary ambiguity (as is usually resolved by pre eden e spe i ations) and for e onomy
of expression.
Another onvenient aspe t of the design is that it allows user dened predi ates involving
any number of variables. These may be seen as hyper-edges in the graph. We will illustrate
this feature with an example. Consider an appli ation s enario where the user denes two
4
Figure 1.2: A NAND gate implementation in CMOS.
predi ates pmos and nmos over the nets in a transistor ir uit database, where the predi ate
pmos, in the notation (upred pmos (x y z)), is true for the three nets x,y and z, that
ontain the gate, drain, and sour e terminals respe tively of a pmos eld ee t transistor.
Similarly dened is the nmos predi ate for nmos transistors. Following is a query that
mat hes instan es of the sub ir uit in gure 1.2. Here the keyword upred signies that it
is a user-dened predi ate.
1: (and
2: (upred nmos (x1 mid gnd))
3: (upred nmos (x2 mid out))
4: (upred pmos (x1 out vdd))
5: (upred pmos (x2 out vdd))
6: (all-distin t (x1 x2 out mid gnd vdd) ))
The above query's resemblan e of a textual netlist des ription formats is noteworthy. This
entails that a textual netlist des ription an be easily transformed into a query using minor
text transformations. As yet another example, the following query mat hes all instan es of
omplete graphs of size 4 in a graph.
1: (and
2: (exists-undire ted-edge (x1 x2))
5

7: (all-distin t (x1 x2 x3 x4)))
It should also be noted that for lo ating a subgraph of interest, it is not always ne es-
sary to pose an fully unambiguous query. This is similar to the ase with nding mat hes in
a text where, for example, sear hing for the pattern "namb" is enough for lo ating the word
"unambiguous". Su h pragmati tri ks may often help redu e the osts of query exe ution.
We imagine that this kind of a system will be quite useful in lo ating interesting or ex ep-
tional patterns in ir uits and system des riptions.
The syntax and semanti s of the input language for the tool will be elaborated later on in
this thesis. In a mi ro-gist, the language in ludes the following.
1. Constru ts for interfa ing a database with this query framework
2. Constru ts for spe ifying the semanti s of the basi propositions or labels (eg. aeroplane
or heli opter in an aforementioned example)
3. The query proper with (a) logi al onne tives (eg. and, or, not, exists, forall
et .) and (b) base predi ates (eg. exists-path, not-equal, exists-edge et .).
It is quite onvenient to name anything that we must refer to several times, so we name
this tool and the language as SQUARE (whether standing for Stru tural QUery And
REasoning or not). In the following se tion we ontinue with a PR or mass-media style
general introdu tion to the work, it is not te hni ally informative but may have a slight
amusement value.
1.1 A PR-style Introdu tion

A pattern is a ompa t des ription of a set of obje ts or observations. When we try to relate
some disparate observations, we often look for a ompa t des ription of all of them. This
is alled the a t of nding a pattern. Almost all animals exhibit the behavior of nding
patterns in their observations and a ting a ordingly. Perhaps the simplest pattern is an
ante edent-subsequent pair, whi h brie y des ribes several observation instan es in whi h
an instan e of the subsequent follows an instan e of the ante edent. When patterns in-
ferred from noted observations apply to new and future observations, it's predi tive power
an be of great advantage. For example, re ognition of the patterns of predator advan e,
prey proximity, mating possibilities, weather phenomena et . are ru ial to the survival
6
in most animals. Learning and intelligent behavior manifests as nding, remembering and
appli ation of patterns. Human beings are good at it. For example we have found a single
ompa t des ription (or pattern) for apparently widely disparate phenomena like falling of
a fruit and the motion of the planets. In summary, nding patterns is extremely important.
We do it for our survival.
There is yet another a tivity that has set us ahead of other fellow life forms - that of building
and using tools. Starting with rude hunting bludgeons we have ome to the point of hoping
to build tools that will relieve us from all work ex ept the ones done for sheer pleasure.
The sophisti ation of the tools we use, be it thought tools or physi al tools, has been ever
in reasing and this aspe t is what sets us widely apart from our primates and an estors.
Having understood the fundamental importan e of pattern nding and tool making, it be-
omes obvious that developing a tool that aids in nding patterns, is a noble undertaking.
We have tried to do exa tly that for some time, and this thesis is an attempt at dissemi-
nating the design and ndings.
Pattern dis overy is a reative pro ess, and we have not had mu h su ess in me hanizing
it, but it is easy to me hanize the a t of he king whether a hypothesized pattern o urs
in a set of observations or obje ts. We present a tool that enables us to nd or lo ate the
o urren e of a spe ial kind of patterns in a spe ial kind of obje ts. Neither the kind of
pattern, nor the kind of obje ts we deal with, is novel, but there is some novelty in the
pra ti al details of usability and extensibility of the tool.
1.2 Motivation
A very naturalisti approa h to design or des ribe obje ts is to view them in terms of their
parts and the relationships between parts. Su h a des ription is referred to as stru tural. A
lass of problems asso iated with stru tural des riptions is to lo ate or possibly just dete t
presen e of ertain patterns within stru tures. For the purposes of this thesis we all this
lass of problems stru tural reasoning or stru tural querying.
The stru tural des riptions an very often be represented by attributed relational graphs, in
whi h the elementary entities are represented by verti es, and the relationships between su h
entities, by the edges of the graph. Unary features asso iated with ea h entity are modelled
by vertex attributes and binary features asso iated with relationships are modelled by the
edge attributes. Su h attributed graph stru tures are en ountered in several engineering
domains and appli ations, and in many ases it helps to be able to query them or reason
about them very well. The following subse tions show how helpful su h reasoning an be.
7
1.2.1 Debugging and Verifying Netlists
Cir uits, when des ribed in terms of onne tions between stru tural omponents, are alled
netlists. In the ontemporary te hnology of very large s ale integration (VLSI) of ir uits,
netlists are most often ompiled (i.e. generated) me hani ally from higher level abstra tions
by software tools popularly known as sili on ompilers. Corre tness of thus generated
netlists (with respe t to spe i ation) may be assumed if the ompilation pro ess is assumed
orre t, whi h is arguably not yet the ase with the urrent level of maturity of sili on
ompilers. Moreover as we are moving lose to the physi al limits of the devi e te hnologies
the engineers are using more and more ustom optimization (manual pla ement et .) to
get the most out of the available devi e te hnologies. What transpires of this is that the
utting edge designs are usually omplex assemblies of hand rafted designs, standard ells,
ma ro ells and ells generated by sili on ompilers. Moreover, the o-existen e of analog
and digital ells on single hips (typi al in systems on hip), requires ustom hand rafting
thereby invalidating the assumption of orre tness by me hanized ompilation.
Thus veri ation and debugging of ir uits remains to be an important a tivity in ele troni
ir uit design pro esses. A signi ant omponent of stru tural debugging and veri ation
a tivity involves spe ifying and mat hing interesting patterns in netlists. We illustrate some
ontexts where stru tural queries on nelists an be quite useful.
A dynami CMOS te hnique named NORA [48℄ requires that there should be no path
through stati CMOS gates from the outputs of a -C2MOS gate to the inputs of a
-n-dynami or a -p-dynami blo k.
Some design styles disallow PMOS transistor hannels onne ted to VSS or NMOS
hannels onne ted to VDD. In a netlist extra ted from layout a violating ongura-
tion may onne t an NMOS hannel to VDD through a resistive path, whi h needs
to be dete ted.
Be ause of the layout pra ti e of transistor folding, a single transistor in a s hemati
an be implemented as several parallel transistors in a layout, and the extra tor may
infer additional passive devi es between parallel transistors. For a layout vs s hemati
(LVS) veri ation to su eed, su h variations need to be lo ated and reasoned about.
It is a violation of CMOS design rules to use a net that does not have a path to VDD
through PMOSFET hannels, as input to any gate. Possibility of its violation may be
ruled out in a design involving library ells but in hand rafted layouts it is possible
to o ur as a result of erroneous design.
8
Combinational y les are prohibited in most design styles. It is often of interest to

he k a gate level netlist for y les that don't pass through ip- ops.
In testing, it is often of interest to determine the input one of a net, i.e. the olle tion
of nets that have signal paths to that net.
Sometimes improper hold violation onstraints make the synthesis tool introdu e long
serial hains of buers and/or inverters in the netlist to introdu e large delays. All
onstraints get satised that way and it is impossible to lo ate them by looking at the
s hemati but they slow down the ir uit unne essarily. Custom stru tural reasoning
an help lo ating them.
For larger designs it's virtually impossible to run analog simulation. Event based and
y le a urate fun tional simulators (like Verilog, Cy lone VHDL, IRSIM et .) are
fast enough but work only for digital abstra tions. Nominally digital hips may have
analog sub ir uits like sense ampliers that an not be handled by digital simulators.
But if the sense amplier blo ks an be lo ated and repla ed by inverters (or other
digital gates equivalent for the purpose of digital simulation) then the ir uit an
be handled by digital simulators, while preserving the fun tional properties. This
requires stru tural reasoning about netlists.
The netlist stru ture is quite amenable to be represented as attributed graphs and problems
similar to the above are very well addressed by querying su h graphs, as will be elaborated
later in this thesis.
1.2.2 Debugging and Verifying Sequential Systems
Behavior of sequential systems is very often des ribed in terms of a nite state ma hine
(FSM), whi h is an abstra t model onsisting of a nite set of states and a transition
relation between states[9℄. Contemporary VLSI systems are ommonly designed at this
level of abstra tion. Design of large sequential systems, as typi al of VLSI systems, is a
omplex task and is liable to human errors, but the e onomi s and the safety riti ality
of the appli ations di tate that the ost of su h errors an be extremely high. In order
to redu e the han es of su h errors' appearing in the nal produ ts, it is ne essary, as is
observed in ommer ial design pro esses, that a major eort is made towards verifying the
designs before they are mass produ ed or deployed. The predominant veri ation method
is that of simulation, in whi h the system is simulated and the simulation tra e is he ked
for orre tness against some spe i ations. For non-trivial systems, the omplete spa e of
behaviors is so large that any reasonable amount of simulation an over only a small part
9
of the spa e, hen e this method an not make any hard guarantees of orre tness. Alongside
simulation, there is another approa h to veri ation whi h is lassied as formal veri ation
and is aimed at providing hard guarantees or proofs of orre tness. Among the many formal
veri ation methods, Model Che king, is gaining popularity due to its s alability to fairly
large designs. In this approa h the omplete system tra e is formally veried against some
stru tural spe i ations. There are some tiny languages for spe ifying patterns of trees,
paths and subgraphs that an be mat hed in some way on labelled graphs inferred from
FSM des riptions. CTL, QCTL, WQCTL, CTL*, LTL and regular expression are to name
a few su h languages [6, 7, 11, 10, 12, 26, 28℄. The FSM is abstra ted as a labelled graph
and the desired properties are modelled as patterns in those little pattern languages so that
mat hing the patterns with the graph is equivalent to he king the properties. This is yet
another example s enario where good ways of querying attributed graphs an be helpful to
mankind.
1.2.3 Analyzing Engineering Drawings
An important problem is that of extra tion of fun tional information from engineering
drawings automati ally. There is a huge lega y of engineering drawings that are stored
as ve tor graphi s data (typi ally as a set of line segments and text) but devoid of any
fun tional or semanti annotation. Su h drawings have traditionally been meant for human
interpretation. Many re ent appli ations need more stru tured and annotated des riptions
of obje ts represented by su h drawings. Su h stru tured des ription an be inferred or
extra ted from the the geometri data in the drawings through stru tural reasoning.
The interse tion points and end points of the line segments in the drawings an be viewed as
verti es, and the segments themselves an be viewed as edges of an indu ed stru tural graph.
Their geometri properties an lead to a ri h set of attributes. Alternatively a onstrained
DeLaunay triangulation of the drawing (with the original segments as onstraints) may
be onstru ted, for whi h ea h triangular ell may indu e a vertex and the ell adja en y
relation may indu e the edges of a graph. This stru ture too is ri h in geometri attributes
that an be used in pattern spe i ation and re ognition.
1.2.4 Feature Re ognition in Solid Models
The boundary representation of solid models have an inherent graph stru ture onsisting
of its fa e elements whi h an be viewed as verti es, and the adja en y relation among fa e
elements whi h an be viewed as edges. Many interesting attributes an be asso iated with
10
this graph. Several elementary geometri properties like edge length, fa e area, edge onvex-
ity, edge angle, number of onvex- on ave transitions along a fa e boundary et . are some
interesting primitive attributes and onstitute a ri h alphabet for des ribing features. Fea-
ture re ognition is important be ause a mere boundary represented solid des ription does
not dire tly provide the information required in many appli ations. For example, manu-
fa turing pro ess design would require identi ation of lo al protrusions and depressions
whi h an in prin iple be inferred from the boundary representation but through feature
re ognition.
1.2.5 Opti al Shape/Chara ter Re ognition
Low level features an be extra ted from an image through edge dete tion and ve torization.
These low level features onstitute the elementary obje ts (or verti es) and a neighborhood
relationship gives rise to the edges of a graph stru ture. The properties of the feature ob-
je ts and their neighborhood relationship dene the set of primitive attributes of the graph
elements. The problem of re ognition of hara ters or shapes in the original image may thus
be redu ed to identi ation of subgraphs of the extra ted attributed graph that onforms
with some designed stru tural spe i ation (possibly expressed as a grammar).
The number of appli ations of stru tural querying has been growing steadily over the
past few de ades through identi ation of new areas, through in reases in viability and
s alability with the in rease in omputing power and through algorithmi improvements.
The following are to name a few more (1) ngerprint re ognition (2) spee h re ognition (3)
remotely sensed data analysis (4) biomedi al data analysis in hromosome images, artoid
pulse waves, EEG signals et . (5) texture analysis (5) spark hamber pi ture analysis and
(6) geophysi al seismi signal analysis.
Graph based modelling is one of the main modes in whi h dis rete mathemati s has been
applied to real world problems. A multitude problem domains have been mapped to labelled
graph models and and several of them an benet from this ni e query tool. Figure 1.3 is
a table of many su h instan es of graph based modelling (ex eprted from [62℄).
1.3 Data Model for SQUARE

The SQUARE framework is primarily about querying labelled graphs. Querying graphs is
an industrially important problem and therefore has re eived plenty of resear h attention.
[17, 16, 19℄ present several pie es of work along dierent dire tions towards this problem.
On similar lines, this work proposes a new tool and approa h for querying labelled graphs,
11
whi h will hopefully be useful in several omputing appli ations.

To query is a transitive verb and the obje t of querying is broadly alled its data model,
at least for our purposes here. Query languages have a taxonomy not only based on the
data model they a t upon, but there is also a diversity of style and power. For example, the
languages for querying text do uments range from spe ifying some words to sear h for, to
advan ed sear h options like boolean expressions over words, to regular expressions over the
hara ter set, to parsing a do ument for re ognizing its stru ture. Su h is the diversity for
just one parti ular data model, that of text, that simply omprises a sequen e of symbols.
There are a number of abstra t data models with their own kindred query languages. Of
spe ial importan e among them is that of the relational data model whi h is very su essful
and ommer ially ubiquitous. Mu h of its su ess an be attributed to its simpli ity whi h
has ultimately led to mass omprehension and a eptan e, further promoted by the presen e
of a simple non-pro edural query language. Sin e its in eption, the relational data model
has had two main query languages of equivalent expressive power - relational al ulus and
relational algebra. Expressive power is loosely a measure of the extent of query semanti s
that is supported by the language. There is no formal metri for measuring expressive
power but there is a partial order - if a language L1 an express the semanti s of all queries
expressible in another language L2 , then L1 is said to be at least as expressive as L2 . For
example, for the symbol stream data model, the regular expression language is at least as
expressive as substring and glob pattern query languages, but not the vi e versa. For the
relational model any query language that is at least as expressive as relational algebra or
relational al ulus is said to be relationally omplete. Relational ompleteness is adequate
expressive power for several appli ations but not for all. For example, relational al ulus or
algebra does not support any form of re ursive query. Several appli ations of the relational
data model all for more expressive query languages, thereby alling for either ad ho
pro edural programming solutions or formal ones like Datalog[18℄.
The SQUARE language has primary fo us on the graph data model, whi h is a subset of
the relational data model in the sense that a graph is equivalent to a homogeneous binary
relation. However, the result of a SQUARE expression has the denotational semanti s
of an n-ary homogeneous relation. There is also provision for user dened predi ates of
several parameters, whi h in turn may indu e relations of any arity in the query expressions.
Thus the data model that an be queried using SQUARE is that of arbitrary homogeneous
relations, not just graphs.
12
Indeed all relations in any obje t database an be seen as homogeneous if all the
obje ts are treated as instan es of a fundamental super-type, and type spe ializations
appear as spe ial predi ates. Thus the homogeneous qualier of SQUARE's data model
is not restri tive and SQUARE an a tually be used to query any obje t database.
However its apability is best utilized when the database has graph like semanti s.
We use an approa h in whi h the query language is fairly independent of the underlying
data, i.e. the spe i s of the underlying data is handled by ode generated from the query
and by the appli ation spe i interfa e ode provided by the user.
1.4 Qui k Overview

The SQUARE framework is a system (i) whi h enables ee tive stru tural querying of
attributed graphs, (ii) whi h is easily ustomizable to various appli ations, and (iv) s ales
well to very large problem sizes. It in ludes the design of a query language and its evaluator.
The system has some predisposition towards appli ations of querying ir uits and nite
state ma hines, however the ore semanti model of the query language omprises simple
orthogonal on epts with no ontologi al ommitment to any spe i domain. Appli ation
spe i ustomizations are done through embedded ode, in a way similar to the use of the
C- ode generating unix tools like lex and ya . It is hoped that this tool will nd more
appli ations than on eived now.
Let us get down to business through some examples for a qui k overview of what is in it for
you.
A basi set of query expressions are based on mat hing paths in a labelled graph, satisfying
a given regular expression. The alphabet of the regular expressions are propositions over the
edges of the graph. The on ept of propositions or labels is slightly dierent from that of
the attributes mentioned in the pre eding se tions. In the pre eding se tions we mentioned
attributed graphs, for whi h attributes are of dierent data types. Labels are attributes of
boolean type, i.e. labels or propositions are either true or false. For example if length is
an attribute of type real number, longerT han12 (length > 12) is a label. When we say
that an edge is labelled with a proposition, we mean that the proposition evaluates to true
on that edge.
The propositions are atomi labels on the edges, possibly dened in terms of edge attributes
or attributes of the sour e and sink verti es of the edge. The propositions are referen ed in
the query expressions by their name. A query is a omposition of several primitive query
13
expressions, ea h of whi h may ontain some variables. Ea h query expression is a predi ate
over its variables and denotes the bindings of its variables for whi h the predi ate evaluates
to true. For example, the following primitive subexpression indi ates bindings of all su h
pairs of nets (in a netlist) to the variables x and y, for whi h there exists a path in the
ir uit graph satisfying the regular expression (drain to sour e * sink is vdd). Here
drain to sour e and sink is vdd are atomi propositions, and '*' is the usual Kleene
losure operator of regular expressions [9℄.
(exists-path (x y) (drain_to_sour e * sink_is_vdd))
As another example, the following expression involving just one variable x denotes all su h
bindings to x that has a self rea hable path through edges from input pins to output pins,
(relevant in a gate level netlist). The '+' in the expression is the positive losure operator of
regular expressions [9℄. A non-empty resulting set of bindings obtained on a netlist for the
following expression will indi ate the presen e of a ombinational loop.
(exists-path (x x) (in_to_out +))
The proposition in to out is so dened that only the edges from input to output pins
are labelled with it. The regular expression part an be very expressive in spe ifying path
patterns. Some typi al patterns that may be very useful are listed in Figure 1.4.
The query subexpressions, as has been illustrated, ontains variables. A omplete query is
a omposition of several basi subexpressions onne ted by relational al ulus onne tives
like logi al operators AND,OR,NOT et . and quantiers over variables in subexpressions.
For example,
(and <subexpression 1 involving variables x y z>
<subexpression 2 involving variables w v x>
<subexpression 3 involving variables u y z> )
indu es all bindings of variables u,v,w,x,y and z for whi h all predi ates in the subex-
pressions 1,2 and 3 evaluate to true.
If the onne ting operator in the above expression was or instead of and, then the indu ed
bindings would be su h that at least one subexpression is true.
The semanti s of quanti ation is identi al to that in the domain relational al ulus and
rst order logi . The variables that are quantied are said to be bound and do not generate
bindings in the overall expression. A variable that is not bound, i.e. whose o urren e is
not within the s ope of a quantier that quanties it, is alled alled a free variable.
For example the expression
(exists (x) <subexpression involving x,y and z>)
14
has only y and z as its free variables, and the semanti s of quanti ation eliminates the
s ope of the bound variable x in any outer expression, of whi h the above expression is
a subexpression. The same variable symbol may appear in any outer expression but it
is treated as a dierent variable from that inside the quantifying subexpression. In the
above, we mentioned a query primitive whi h omputes whether there exists a path between
two given verti es, with the string of edge labels satisfying a given regular expression.
Complementary to this, there is another query operator that omputes whether all possible
paths between two given verti es satisfy a given regular expression. SQUARE in ludes
primitive expressions of omputational tree logi (CTL), for whi h the queried graph is
interpreted as a Kripke Stru ture, whi h is a nite folded model of an innite tree (to be
elaborated in a subsequent hapter). Finally, for ea h query, one an spe ify some a tion to
be performed for ea h satisfying assignment of the free variables. This aspe t is similar to
that of awk. There are three a tion ode blo ks, one is alled at the beginning of the mat h
pro ess, another is alled on ea h satisfying assignment of the query, and the nal one is
alled after all the satisfying assignments have been traversed.
1.5 Layout of the Thesis

Chapter 2 presents some mathemati al notation and denitions that will help in expressing
the remaining thesis. Chapter 3 presents the SQUARE language in detail.
Chapter 4 presents the interfa e of SQUARE as require for integrating appli ations.
Chapter 5 des ribes a full blown appli ation of SQUARE to query and manipulation of
netlists.
Chapter 6 des ribes the implementation of square in luding the algorithms used and their
omplexity analysis.
Chapter 7 presents some performan e data about SQUARE.
Chapter 8 on ludes the thesis with a dis ussion on the pros and ons of the presented work
and outlines the s ope for future work.
15
Subje t Area and Appli ation Meaning of Verti es and Edges

omputer programming vertex labels are program steps
ow harts edge dire tions show ow
so ial organization verti es are persons
so ial networks edges represent intera tions
ivil engineering verti es are road interse tions
road networks edges are roads
operations resear h verti es are a tivities
s heduling edges show operational pre eden e
so iology verti es are individuals
hierar hi al dominan e edges show who reports to whom
omputer programming verti es are subprograms
subprogram alling diagram edges show alling dire tion
e ology verti es are spe ies
food webs edges show who eats whom
operations resear h verti es are a tivities to be s heduled
s heduling edges are a tivity on i ts
genealogy verti es are family members
family trees edges show parenthood
probabilisti analysis verti es are pro ess states
Markov models edges are state transitions
traÆ ontrol verti es are interse tion
assigning one-way streets edges are streets
omputer engineering verti es are omputational nodes
ommuni ations networks edges are ommuni ations links
operations resear h verti es are supply and demand nodes
transportation networks edges are supply lines
postal delivery routing verti es are street interse tions
Chinese Postman Problem edges are streets
information theory verti es are binary strings
Gray odes edges are single-bit hanges
radio broad asting verti es are broad ast stations
assignment of frequen ies edges are potential interferen e
hemistry verti es are hemi als
preventing explosions edges are o- ombustibility
artography regions are ountries
map- oloring edges are borders
ele tri al network boards verti es are ir uit omponents
avoiding insulation edges are wires
VLSI omputer hips verti es are ir uit omponents
minimizing layering edges are wires
omputer operating systems verti es are prioritized jobs
priority trees edges are priority relations
physi al hemistry verti es are atoms
ounting isomers edges are mole ular bonds
Human resour es management verti es are people and jobs
personnel assignment edges are job- apabilities
Figure 1.3: Some Graph Models in Real World Appli ations

16
Expression Informal Meaning

(p *) p is true on all the edges of the path.
(((:r *) or [:p r℄ * ) p true *) p holds on some edge on the path.

before r holds.
( (:q *) (q (p *)) ?) p is true on all edges of the path after
q holds.
( (:p) * p true *) p is true on some edge of the path.
(true * p p p true *) path ontaining 3 onse utive edges
with label p.
(:p * p p) the rst o urren e of p-edge on the
path is followed by another p-edge.
( (:is inv * is inv :is inv * is inv) * ) the path ontains an even
number of inverters
Figure 1.4: Some Typi al Regular Expression Patterns
Chapter 2
Mathemati al Tools and Notations

The semanti s of SQUARE is based on a number of ideas borrowed from dis rete mathe-
mati s and theoreti al omputer s ien e. These ideas are best expressed through a set of
spe ially dened terms and on epts. This hapter attempts to outline the denitions of
several su h terms that will help in the subsequent dis ourse. These notations will be useful
in expressing the express the subsequent se tions ee tively.
2.1 Stru tures : Sets, Tuples, Strings, Relations and Fun -

tions
The on epts of set theory are so fundamental that it forms the basis language for most
bran hes of s ien e. Readers totally unfamiliar with set theory are advised to look up a
textbook on the subje t. Intuitively, a set is any well-dened list or olle tion of obje ts.
The obje ts omprising the set are alled its elements or members. The statement -
x is an element of a set S or, equivalently, x belongs to S is denoted by x 2 S .
The negation of x 2 S is written x 2= A, whi h reads x is not an element of S . Sets
are represented in several ways. These representations an be broadly lassied into two -
enumerative and non-enumerative. In the enumerative way, one lists all the members
of the set. For example, S1 = f2; 5; 7g is an enumerative spe i ation of a set whose
members are the numbers 2, 5 and 7. In an enumerative representation, all the elements
are listed, en losed in bra es fg and separated by omma. The non-enumerative way of
des ribing is to state some properties whi h hara terize the elements in the set. For
example, S2 = fxjx is a prime number and x < 10g whi h reads S is the set of all x su h
that x is a prime number and x is less than than 10, is su h a spe i ation. Non enumerative
des ription allows spe i ation of large and innite sets. When ea h of the elements of a
set S1 belongs to another set S2 we say that S1 is a subset of S2 (or equivalently that
17
18
S2 is a superset of S1 ) and denote this statement by S1 S2 or S2 S2 . When two

sets have the same members (i.e. S1 S2 and S2 S1 ) then the two sets are said to be
equal (denoted by S1 = S2 ). The symbol for negation of () is * (+) and reads - not
a subset (superset) of. The number of elements of a set S is alled its ardinality and
is denoted by jS j. A null set (denoted as ;) is a set with no element, i.e. with ardinality
zero. A number of meaningful operations have been dened over sets. The most basi ones
are that of union, interse tion, dieren e and omplement. The union of two sets S1 and
S2 is dened as the set fxjx 2 S1 or x 2 S2 g, and is denoted by S1 [ S2 . The interse tion
of two sets S1 and S2 is dened as the set fxjx 2 S1 and x 2 S2 g, and is denoted by
S1 \ S2 . Set dieren e between S1 and S2 is fxjx 2 S1 and x 2= S2 g and is denoted by
S1 S2 . Denition of the omplement operator requires the assumption of an universe of
dis ourse - whi h is the omplete set of possible values that the elements of the sets under
onsideration an have. We denote the universe of dis ourse by U. The the omplement of
a set S is U S and is denoted as S 0 . There is yet another operator alled the symmetri
dieren e, whi h for two sets S1 and S2 is dened as (S1 S2 ) [ (S2 S1 ) and denoted by
S1 ./ S2 . The power set of a set S is the set of all its subsets and is denoted by 2S . This
notation arises from the fa t that the power set of S has a ardinality of 2jS j. Two sets are
said to be disjoint if their interse tion is the empty set.
A few sets are so ommon in usage that there are spe ial symbols for them. Following are
a few su h sets that will be en ountered in this thesis.
N : The set of natural numbers.
Z : The set of integers.
Z+0 : The set of all non-negative integers.
R : The set of all real numbers.
R+0 : The set of all non-negative real numbers.
A set does not have any implied order on its elements. Two set enumerations that dier
only in the order of appearan e of the elements spe ify two equal sets. Also there is no su h
thing as multipli ity of membership i.e. a set written as f1; 2; 3; 3; 4g is a tually the set
f1; 2; 3; 4g. Diering espe ially on these aspe ts of ontology, is another mathemati al entity
alled a tuple. A tuple too is a on eptional olle tion of obje ts, but it has an implied
ordering on the members. Tuples are usually spe ied in enumerated form. A tuple is an
ordered list of its members, and an obje t may appear more than on e in a tuple in dierent
19
positions. The set operations mentioned above are not normally appli able on tuples. Simi-
lar to ardinality of sets is the arity of a tuple, whi h is the number of its elements. A tuple
with n elements is said to be of arity n or n-ary (as spe ial ases, 1-ary is alled unary, 2-
ary is alled binary, 3-ary is alled ternary). A binary tuple is also alled an ordered pair.
An n-ary tuple is often onveniently alled n-tuple. The parentheses (), is used for en losing
the elements of a tuple (unlike the bra es fg for sets). Ea h member in a tuple has a xed
position. To refer to an element of a tuple, we may use an ordinal name of its position
(1st ; 2nd ; 3rd ; : : : ; nth et .). For example, in a tuple (; ; ; Æ), its 4th element is Æ. Some-
times we asso iate a s hema with a tuple. A s hema of a tuple is a meta-des ription of the
tuple. A s hema of an n-tuple T is another n-tuple whose kth element is a referring name
for the kth element of T . We illustrate this with an example. If H = (name, age, gender) is
the s hema for two tuples T1 = (Peter Parker; 26; M) and T2 = (Mary Jane Watson; 25; F),
one an refer to the elements of T1 and T2 by the element in the same position in H , eg.
age of T1 is 25, name of T2 is Mary Jane Watson et . (a ording to s hema H, whi h is
assumed by ontext). A tuple that has an asso iated s hema is often alled a re ord, as
ommonly en ountered in the parlan e of databases.
Another losely related olle tion obje t is a sequen e. A sequen e is a tuple (i.e. an
ordered olle tion) , ex ept that (1) we never view a sequen e as a re ord (i.e. there
is no s hema), (2) their elements are in some sense similar and (3) we dene an addi-
tional operator on strings alled on atenation. We use the angle bra kets hi in the
notation to en lose the elements of a sequen e. If 1 = ha1 ; a2 ; a3 ; : : : ; am i and 2 =
hb1 ; b2 ; b3 ; : : : ; bn i are two sequen es, their on atenation, denoted by 1 + 2 is the sequen e
ha1 ; a2 ; a3 ; : : : ; am ; b1 ; b2 ; b3 ; : : : ; bn i. Analogous to ardinality of sets and arity of tuples, is
the length of a sequen e whi h is the number of its elements. A sequen e is often spe ied
by a generating fun tion, and is represented by a notation of the form hf (i) : i = 1 : : : ni.
Here the rst element of the sequen e is f (1), the se ond element is f (2) and so on till the
nth element. In this notation one an spe ify innite sequen es too (eg. hi2 : i = 1 : : : 1i).
Next we dene another very important operation on sets whi h ould be dened only after
we have introdu ed tuples. It's the artesian produ t of two sets. The artesian produ t
S1 S2 of two sets S1 and S2 is dened as:
S1 S2 = f(x1 ; x2 )jx1 2 S1 and x2 2 S2 g
i.e. it is the set of all su h binary tuples (ordered pairs) whose 1st element belongs to the
left operand S1 and whose se ond element belongs to S2 . When we ompute multi-produ ts
by su essive appli ation of artesian produ t we get tuples of tuples in the produ t set.
20
For example by denition of binary artesian produ t we have

(S1 S2 ) S3 = f((x1 ; x2 ); x3 )jx1 2 S1 and x2 2 S2 and x3 2 S3 g
In order to dene an asso iative artesian produ t we an atten the the tuples in the
multi-produ t (eg. write the 3-tuple (x1 ; x2 ; x3 ) instead of the tuple of tuples ((x1 ; x2 ); x3 )).
Thus a multi-produ t of sets S1 S2 : : : Sn is dened to be
f(x1 ; x2 ; : : : ; xn)jx1 2 S1 and x2 2 S2 : : : and xn 2 Sng
There is a spe ial notation for artesian produ t of a set with itself - S S is written as
S 2 , S S S as S 3 and so on.
A relation between several sets S1 ; S2 ; : : : ; Sn is a subset of their artesian produ t S1
S2 : : : Sn . We refer to a relation by its name. For example if N is the set of all natural
numbers, one an dene a binary relation named relatively-prime of N to itself as follows
f(x; y)jx 2 N and y 2 N and x has no positive integer fa tor other than 1 ommon with yg
This learly is a subset of N N . For a tuple whi h is a member of S1 S2 : : : Sn
to be a member of a relation R, its elements must satisfy some additional onstraint that
denes the relation. When a tuple (x1 ; x2 ; : : : ; xn ) is a member of a relation R, we write
R(x1 ; x2 ; : : : ; xn ), or (x1 ; x2 ; : : : ; xn ) 2 R. For binary relations we often use a spe ial inx
notation x1 Rx2 . The binary relation is espe ially important to this work and we delve a
bit deeper into its notations and properties. Here we list a few qualiers for binary relations
of a set S to itself.
A binary relation R is said to be re exive - if (x; y) 2 R whenever x = y.
A binary relation R is said to be symmetri if (x; y) 2 R implies that (y; x) 2 R.
A relation is alled antisymmetri if (x; y) 2 R and (y; x) 2 R implies that x = y
A binary relation is said to be transitive if (x; y) 2 R and (y; z ) 2 R implies that
(x; z ) 2 R.
If a binary relation is re exive, symmetri and transitive it is said to be an equiva-
len e.
If a binary relation is re exive, transitive and antisymmetri , it is alled a partial
order
21
A binary relation R is alled a total order if it is a partial order and for every tuple
(x; y) in S S , one of the three must hold (1) (x; y) 2 R, (2) (y; x) 2 R or (3) x = y.
Next we ome to the nal major on ept of this se tion - the fun tion. A fun tion may be
thought of as a spe ial kind of binary relation. A fun tion f is a binary relation between
two sets S and T su h that for a member x of S there is exa tly one entry (x; y) in f .
The two asso iated sets S and T of the fun tion f are alled its domain and o-domain
respe tively, and the notation for writing that is f : S ! T . If (x; y) 2 f , y is alled the
image of x under the fun tion f . A fun tion assigns exa tly one image to every element of
its domain. If we slightly loosen this restri tion by saying that some elements of the domain
may not have an image (i.e. for ea h element x in S , if there is at most one entry (x; y) in
S ) then su h a relation is alled a partial fun tion. When (x; y) 2 f , we use the notation
y = f (x). The set fyjy = f (x) and x 2 S g is alled the range of the fun tion f , whi h
is a subset of its o-domain (T ) and is denoted by the f (S ). Fun tions have the following
ommon qualiers.
A fun tion f is surje tive or onto if f (S ) = T . That is to say, for every y 2 T there
is at least one (x; y) 2 f .
A fun tion is inje tive or one-one if no two elements of S have the same image, i.e.
if f (x1 ) = f (x2 ), then x1 = x2 .
A fun tion f that is both inje tive and surje tive is alled bije tive.
For a set S1 whi h is a subset of the domain S of a fun tion f : S ! T , f (S1 ) denotes the
set fyjy = f (x) and x 2 S1 g and is alled the image of S1 under f . Conversely, for a set T1
whi h is a subset of the o-domain T of f , f 1 (T1 ) denotes the set fxjf (x) 2 T1 and x 2 S g
and is alled the inverse image of T1 under f .
One may dene arity of a fun tion depending on the omposition of its domain. If the
domain set is a tually an n-ary relation, then we all the fun tion to be n-ary. For a tuple
(x; y) belonging to a fun tion f , we all x the argument to f and all y the returned
value of f . One parti ular lass of fun tions is spe ially important - it onsists of the
ones for whi h the domain is S n and the o-domain is S for some set S . Su h a fun tion
f : S n ! S is alled an operator of arity n (or n-ary operator) over the set S . We did
mention operator earlier in this se tion, eg. while introdu ing [, \, 0, ./ et . of sets, well
before we ame to dene it. In doing so, we bumped into the following ir ular denition.
Cartesian produ t () is like an operator over the set of all sets (speaking stri tly, the
set of all sets has some inherent ontradi tions and is assumed not to exist, but it doesn't
22
hurt to have the intuition of it). Then we ame to dene relations as subsets of artesian
produ ts. Then fun tion was dened as a spe ial kind of relations, and nally operator is
a spe ial lass of fun tions. In the former appearan e of the on ept operator I pretended
the presen e of the intuition that an operator is some gizmo that produ es something out
of something (in those ases it produ es new sets out of sets.). The same intuition prevails
even after the formal denition. I hope a more areful and rigorous des ription an avoid
this ir ular denition but I am ignoring it here as the on epts appear intuitively lear.
Moreover indu tive (re ursive) denitions are perfe tly alright in mathemati s, but I don't
know whether this ir ular denition falls in that ategory. It is quite intuitive to view a
fun tion as a devi e that a ts upon the elements of its domain set and produ es elements
of its o-domain set, and for a given domain element, its appli ation always produ es the
same o-domain element. The same intuition does well for operators ex ept that operators
are more restri ted in the hoi e of domain and o-domain sets, in that the two have to be
the same set.
A fun tion, by denition is a spe ial ase of a relation but is as expressive a stru ture
as a relation. Any relation may represented by a fun tion. For example, if R 2 A B C
is a relation and if a fun tion f : A B C ! fT; F g is dened as f (z ) = T if z 2
R and otherwise f (z ) = F , then the fun tion f expresses the same information as the
relation R. This shows that fun tions and relations are expressively equivalent. This idea
will be used subsequently in en oding relations as fun tions (propositional fun tions, to
be pre ise)and symboli ally manipulating a spe ial representation ( alled binary de ision
diagram) of the fun tions to perform impli it operations over relations. This an be
elaborated further only after introdu ing propositional fun tions and binary de ision
diagrams. The following se tions will introdu e these requisite on epts.
2.2 Propositional Predi ate Logi

Logi deals with de iding what an inferred from a given set of fa ts. Propositional logi is
a mathemati al stru ture meant for study and manipulation of logi al onne tions between
elementary fa ts or statements. Elementary statements are expressions that are either true
or false but not both. Truth and falsehood may be seen as two arbitrary values represented
by symbols T and F that are dierent from one another, intuitively representing our every-
day onnotation of truth and falsehood respe tively. Any statement in propositional logi
has exa tly one truth value from the set B = fT; F g asso iated with it. This set B is
alled the set of Boolean values. A few operators dened on the set B onstitute logi al
23
onne tives for omposing elementary statements into ompound statements. Coming to
pin down the denitions, any statement that has an asso iated truth value from the set B
is alled a proposition. Propositions are either atomi or omposite. The truth or false-
hood of an atomi proposition is its intrinsi property and is not subje t to reasoning -
i.e. atomi propositions are those statements that we do not analyze or de ompose further
in propositional logi . A omposite proposition is made out of atomi propositions and
logi al onne tives, whi h in turn are a few operators dened on the set B . We denote
atomi propositions by arbitrary symbols (eg. P,Q,"Mars is red", "sky is green"). There
are a few operators dened on B whi h are applied on propositions as if propositions are
variables representing their truth values. The most ommon operators are AND (denoted
by ^), OR (denoted by _) and NOT (denoted by :). AND and OR are binary and NOT
is unary (1-ary). The domain set for the operators are so small that the operators an be
spe ied enumeratively yet on isely. Please note that by onvention most authors use the
inx notation in whi h the binary operator symbol is written between the two operands.
However in the syntax of SQUARE we shall use the prex notation in whi h the operator
symbol pre edes the operands. The unary NOT or negate (whi h is an operator over B )
of a proposition p, is usually represented by one of the notations: :p, p, p0 , p or (NOT p).
The denition goes that :p is (or has a truth value) T if p is F , and is F when p is T . This
is usually written in the truth table from as in gure 2.1. The ommon binary onne tives
p :p
T F
F T
Figure 2.1: Truth table for NOT
are named in gure 2.2 and their fun tional mappings given in gure 2.3.
operator prex notation inx notation meaning

onjun tion (AND p q) p^q both p and q are T
disjun tion (OR p q) p_q at least one of p and q is T
onditional (IMPLIES p q) p)q p implies q
bi onditional (EQUIV p q) p,q p and q imply ea h other
ex lusive or (EXOR p q) pq exa tly one of p and q is T
Figure 2.2: Common Propositional Binary Operators
24
p q p_q p^q p)q p,q pq

T T T T T T F
T F T F F F T
F T T F T F T
F F F F T T F
Figure 2.3: Truth Table for Common Propositional Binary Operators
TODO: Dene propositional variables, (boolean) fun tions of variables, their rep-

resentations (normal forms) and de ision problems, introdu e INF and BDD brie y,
without going into algorithms. Viewing (BDD based) SAT solver as a powerful abstra t
ma hine.
2.3 Graphs : Basi Denitions

A binary relation may be represented by a boolean fun tion of two variables. The assign-
ments to the variables for whi h the value of the fun tion is true, are said to be members
of the relation. Binary relations are ni ely representable by what are known as relational
diagrams. In a relational diagram there are two point sets, ea h of whi h represents ele-
ments of M. If an element x is related to an element y then an arrow is pointed from the
point representing the element x in the rst point set to that representing the element y
in the se ond point set. This representation is espe ially useful when the relation is not
homogeneous, i.e. a subset of artesian produ t of two dierent sets. In this ase the two
point sets represent the elements of dierent sets. When the relation is homogeneous we
may spe ially ondense the relational diagram - instead of having two point sets we an
have just one set of points, ea h representing an element of M, and have an arrow from x to
y whenever x and y are related by the given relation. This representation of a homogeneous
binary relation has the stru ture of a graph. A graph is dened as a pair G = (V; E ), where
V is the set of verti es and E ( V V ) is the set of edges. An edge e = (u; v) is a member
of the edge set, where u and v are members of V . If the graph is dire ted then edges are
ordered pairs of verti es, if the graph is not dire ted, an edge (u; v) is identied with the
edge (v; u). Verti es u and v are alled respe tively the head and the tail vertex of the
edge (u; v). Two edges are said to be onne ted if the tail vertex of one edge is the same
as the head vertex of the other. A path is a sequen e of edges in whi h every onse utive
25
pair of edges is onne ted.

TODO: Dene Transitive Closure, Conne ted Components, Explain why edge la-
belling is at least as expressive as vertex labelling in terms of modelling power.
2.4 Languages
The basi obje t in the study of languages is a string. A string is a sequen e of sym-
bols. For example, all the english words are sequen es of letter symbols and therefore are
strings. The entire language is a set of su h strings. In formulating a formal stru ture
of languages, we need to x the set of symbols that an appear in the strings. Su h a
nite set of symbols is alled the alphabet, let's all it V . If s1 = hu1 ; u2 ; u3 ; : : : ; um i
and s2 = hv1 ; v2 ; v3 ; : : : ; vn i are two strings, their on atenation, denoted as s1 :s2 , is the
sequen e hu1 ; u2 ; u3 ; : : : ; um ; v1 ; v2 ; v3 ; : : : ; vn i. An empty string hi is denoted by " and is the
identity element under on atenation. It may be noted that the operator of on atenation
is asso iative and would form a semigroup over a set of strings that is dened to be losed
under on atenation. The free monoid V generated by an alphabet V is the stru ture
whose domain is the set of all strings omposable from the symbols in V, with the semigroup
operation of string on atenation.
A language over an alphabet V is a subset L of its free monoid V .
The on atenation of two languages L1 and L2 is the set fxy : x 2 L1 ; y 2 L2 g, and is
denoted by L1 L2 .
The ith power of a language L is denoted as Li and dened re ursively by the rule L0 = fg
and Li = Li 1 L; i 0.
The union of two languages L1 and L2 is the usual set theoreti union of the two sets of
strings that onstitute ea h language, and is denoted as L1 [ L2 . Similarly the interse tion
of two languages L1 and L2 is denoted as L1 \ L2 and is the usual set theoreti interse tion.
The omplement of a language L over an alphabet V is the set theoreti omplement
language L, where where the free monoid V is taken as the universe of dis ourse for the
omplementation. The Kleene losure (or Kleene star) of a language L is denoted as
L and is dened as the union i0 Li .
S
The positive losure (or Kleene plus) of a language L is denoted as L+ and is dened
S
as the union i1 Li .
A language L is regular if it is one of the following and nothing else.
The empty set ;.
26
The empty string f"g.

A single symbol string fhaig where a is an alphabet symbol.
It an be obtained from the above three kinds of languages by nitely many appli a-
tions of on atenation, union and Kleene losure.
TODO: Dene generative representations of languages - grammars, regular expression,
Chomsky hierar hy, and de ision pro edures for language ontainment testing (automata
in parti ular)
2.5 Des ribing Semanti s of Languages
TODO:Lambda notation, denotational notation, a small example of denotational deni-

tion
2.6 Relational Cal ulus using Binary De ision Diagrams

TODO : Dene relational al ulus, des ribe how relations and relational operators an
be represented by boolean fun tions. How BDD an solve relational al ulus queries.
Mention omplexities of BDD operations.
Chapter 3
The SQUARE Language

The SQUARE language has a high resemblan e of the awk programming language. Its
basi usage paradigm is that of a pattern-a tion pair; when a spe ied pattern is found in a
graph, a user dened a tion is invoked on the mat h. The pattern spe i ation ontains one
or more variables, and in the a tion the same variables are bound to values orresponding
to the mat h. We will gradually introdu e the language in this se tion, but we need to
dene some notation rst.
The on ept of atomi propositions has been dened in hapter 2. Given a set of atomi
propositions A and a graph G = (V; E ), we an dene a propositional truth assignment
fun tion : E A ! B, su h that for an edge e 2 E and a proposition a 2 A, if (e; a) =
T rue then we say that the edge e is labelled with the proposition a. The set of labels on
an edge e may thus be written as fp : (e; p) = T rueg and is denoted by L(e). The negate
of a proposition a is represented by a and has the property that (e;a) = :((u; v); a).
Thus, if a proposition a is relevant to a graph and a query, for any edge e, either a2 L(e)
or a2 L(e). While listing the labels of an edge, we shall not usually write the negated
propositional labels and the absen e of a parti ular proposition symbol among the labels of
an edge would imply that the edge is a tually labelled with its negate, i.e. the absen e of a
label a on an edge e would signify that (e; a) is F alse (i.e (e; a) is T rue). We all this
positive form of labelling, and this is done merely for onvenien e of notation, but the
sense remains as though the negate labels are present. Two edges are said to be onne ted
if the head vertex of one edge is the same one as the tail vertex of the other. A sequen e
of edges where every two su essive edges are onne ted edges is alled a path. Given a
path he1 ; e2 ; : : : en i, a label string for the path is a sequen e of labels ha1 ; a2 ; a3 ; : : : ; an i
su h that a1 2 L(e1 ), a2 2 L(e2 ), : : :, an 2 L(en ). The tail vertex of the kth edge (i.e. of
ek in the path he1 ; e2 ; : : : ; ek ; : : : ; en i) is alled the kth vertex of the path (starting with
the name rst vertex for k = 1, se ond vertex for k = 2 and so forth). The head
27
28
vertex of the last edge en of the path he1 ; e2 ; : : : ; ek ; : : : ; en i is alled its last vertex. We
informally all a path to be from its rst vertex and to its last vertex. The path queries
in SQUARE involves de iding whether for a path there is a label string that is a epted
by a given regular expression. We illustrate this using an example. Consider the graph
given in gure 3.1 (Please note that the labels on the edges are written in positive form, i.e.
absen e of a label symbol implies presen e of its negate). When the following query is posed
b,c
b,c
n1 a a,b n2 b
a
a a n5 n4
n3 a n6 b
b
n8 n7 a
n10 n9
Figure 3.1: A Labelled Graph.
on the graph of gure 3.1 , we intend to mat h all su h pairs of verti es (x,y) for whi h
there is a path from x to y (i.e. a path with x as its rst and y as its last vertex) whose
label sequen e satises the regular expression (a (a b) +), whi h means that it has a label
string belonging to the set fha,b,ai,ha,b,a,b,ai,hb,a,b,a,b,ai,...g i.e. the set of all
strings starting with an a and followed by one or more repetitions of the sequen e ha,bi.
The exe ution of this query would print the result as in gure 3.3. To ask for pairs of nodes
(square
:vars (x y)
:query (exists-path (x y) (a (b a) +))
:begin "int nt=0; out<<\"beginning to mat h\"<<endl;"
:a tion " out<<x->getName()<<\"->\"<<y->getName()<<endl;++ nt;"
:end " out<<endl<<\"found \"<< nt<<\" mat h(es) \";"
)
Figure 3.2: A simple exists-path query

(x,y) su h that y is rea hable from x through path(s) satisfying the regular expressions
( *) and (a (b a) +) (but it need not be the same path that satises both the regular
expressions), we need to modify the query of gure 3.2 to pose the query as in gure 3.4.
The regular expressions used in square have some synta ti dieren e from the familiar
29
beginning to mat h
n1->n8
n1->n6
n1->n9
n1->n4
n1->n5
n2->n6
n2->n9
n2->n4
n2->n5
n7->n9
n7->n4
n7->n5
found 12 mat h(es)
Figure 3.3: Results of the query in gure 3.2
ones of grep, awk et . The dieren e mainly stems from the fa t that here the alphabet
symbols are names of propositions and an be several hara ters long. Thus su essive
symbols in the expressions are separated by spa e. Parenthesis is used for grouping, for
example in the expression (a (b d) *), it is the subexpression (b d) that goes under
the Kleene losure. The symbol or is spe ial in a regular expression and spe ies alternative
subsequen es. For example, the expression (a (b ) or d e) would mat h paths with
label strings ha,b, ,ei or ha,d,ei. As should be lear from this example, the or applies
to the symbol or group immediately to the left and right of the or symbol and spe ies
the alternative subsequen es hb, i and hdi. One an also spe ify the boolean negate of
a proposition symbol in a regular expression, whi h is denoted by an immediate prex
(tilde) with the proposition symbol. For example, if a is a proposition symbol, a is its
negate.
Another interesting query operator related to paths in graphs is that of all-paths. Using
an all-paths query expression, one spe ies a onstraint on two verti es - that all the paths
between the two verti es have a label string a epted by a spe ied regular expression. We
illustrate this with an example. Consider the query in gure 3.5 as being posed on the
graph of gure 3.1.
30
Query:
(square
:vars (x y)
:query (and
(exists-path (x y) ( *))
(exists-path (x y) (a (b a) +))
)
:end " out<<endl<<\"found \"<< nt<<\" mat hes \";"
)
Result:
beginning to mat h
n1->n6
found 1 mat h(es)
Figure 3.4: A query involving two exists-path sub-expressions under logi al onjun tion,
and its exe ution result
The query expression (all-paths (x y) ((a b) +) ) spe ies the onstraint that all
the paths with x as rst vertex and y as last vertex has a label string mat hing the regular
expression ((a b) +). But what if there is no path from x to y ? In order to understand,
we have to take a loser look at the semanti s of the subexpression. This subexpression
holds for all su h assignments of the variables x and y ranging over the verti es, for whi h
there is no path from x to y that does not satisfy the regular expression ((a b) +), and
in parti ular when there is no path at all from x to y then it naturally holds for that pair.
Not that it ould not be dened otherwise for this spe ial ase but this denition is more
aestheti ally pleasing. This is somewhat similar to the denition of logi al impli ation of
propositional logi where A ) B is true irrespe tive of B when A is false.
Thus, posing merely the expression (all-paths (x y) ((a b) +) ) as a query would yield
several su h assignments of x and y for whi h there is no path from x to y (e.g (x=n2,y=n1),
(x=n3,y=n1) et . in gure 3.1). The omplete query (gure 3.5) ex ludes su h pairs by
additionally onstraining the variables x and y by the subexpression (exists-path (x y)
(true *)), whi h states that there must exist a path from x to y, hen e the result onsists
of the few assignments for whi h there indeed exists a path (or more) from x to y and all
31
Query:
(square
:vars (x y)
:query (and
(all-paths (x y) ((a b) +) )
(exists-path (x y) (true *)))
:end " out<<endl<<\"found \"<< nt<<\" mat h(es) \";")
Result:
beginning to mat h
n2->n7
n2->n10
found 2 mat h(es)
Figure 3.5: A query involving the all-paths expression and its exe ution result
of them have a label string satisfying ((a b) +).

Chapter 4
Integrating Appli ations with

SQUARE
4.1 Appli ation Integration Manual
4.2 An Appli ation : Querying Graphs Spe ied in DOT
4.3 An Appli ation : Grep using SQUARE
32
Chapter 5
Stru tural Query on Cir uits

5.1 Ba kground
The art of ele troni s is largely based on harnessing ertain phenomena of ele troni ow,
ele tromagneti elds and waves. It is very wonderful to note that our physi al universe
oers su h ni e fa ilities and also that it has been possible for human ons iousness to
per eive them, understand their behavior and utilize them. Our utilization of ele troni s
has re ently been very proli . There has been some desire, eort and progress towards
building omputing ma hinery sin e the 19th Century but the ele troni s te hnology break-
throughs in the late 20th entury has brought about su h dramati progress that was simply
unimaginable in the past. Although some of us des ribe our times as the spa e age, it is the
ontemporary ele troni s revolution that has made by far mu h bigger impa t on and pen-
etration into human life on the whole. Ele troni s is still a very happening area. Dynami
as the eld is, the rate of obsoles en e of knowledge is immense too. The aggressiveness of
the ele troni s industry about innovation has no mat h in history. The digital paradigm in
ele troni s, whi h is based on pro essing two well separated levels of signal value thereby
ensuring wide toleran e to physi al deviations, makes physi al realizations robust and reli-
able. This makes the physi al swit hing devi es a t as ideal swit hing devi es for two-level
signals, thereby posing little physi ally based limitation to physi al implementation of dis-
rete mathemati al operators. Combinations of swit hing elements in digital ele troni s
give rise to a variety of logi elements whi h in turn are physi al implementations of some
operations of mathemati al logi . The ideal nature of this realization has implied a largely
dedu tive and imaginative synthesis, as opposed to observational synthesis in the ase of
largely empiri al s ien es. This property of digital ele troni s has opened the slui e gate of
human imagination, dis ipline and endeavor and has fa ilitated the revolutionary progress
in omputation, ommuni ation and automation. One of the main indi ators of this progress
33
34
is the s ale of integration of ele troni ir uits, whi h is a measure of the size and omplexity
of the systems realized through them. The ele troni s industry has termed the urrent (as
of 2004) stage of integration VLSI, an a ronym for Very Large S ale Integration, sporting
hips with hundreds of millions of swit hing elements, with personal omputers possessing
billions of bytes of memory and performing billions of operations per se ond.
The s ale of ir uit integration has ome a very long way within a few de ades sin e the
in eption of this te hnology. The rate of improvement of this s ale has been ee tively ex-
ponential, roughly obeying Moore's law - a prophe y by Gordon Moore, one of the founders
of Intel Corporation, who envisioned that the number of transistors per hip will ontinue
to double every eighteen months. A major enabling fa tor for this enormous growth has
been the breakthroughs in semi ondu tor devi e te hnology that make it possible to reate
swit hing elements of very small (deep submi ron) dimensions. Another signi ant enabling
fa tor has been the appli ation of omputers in improving the ele troni design methodol-
ogy, popularly known as omputer aided design (CAD). Although the advan es in pro ess
and devi e te hnologies have arguably made more drasti dieren e in VLSI performan e
and s ale, it is through the extensive use of CAD te hnology that designers tame the enor-
mous omplexity of the design task and translate devi e te hnologies into appli ations that
make the big dieren e in everyday life.
Contemporary VLSI CAD te hnologies, espe ially in the domain of digital design, have
progressed to a level where a typi al design initiates as a high level spe i ation of the sys-
tem's behavior and then CAD tools pretty mu h take over the rest of the task. Simulators
render the high level spe i ations into exe utable models, design ompilers ompile these
spe i ations into stru tural forms that are onse utively loser and loser to the sili on im-
plementation and various types of analyzers extra t relevant properties of a design thereby
helping in evaluating various aspe ts of it.
The holy grail of the emerging dis ipline of ele troni design automation (EDA) is omplete
automation in the design work ow, that requires minimal designers' intervention in the de-
sign pro ess. Some ommer ial EDA eorts are a tually lose to it but not quite there yet.
Mu h of its ause an be attributed to the fa t that utting edge of design is always trying
to venture into hitherto unexplored territories thereby raising multitudes of new issues that
are not taken are of by existing do-it-all EDA solutions. Thus the industrial strength VLSI
CAD ows remain to be multi stage pro esses as shown in Figure 5.1 and requires designers'
attention at ea h stage.
Several kinds of spe ialized software tools are deployed in a CAD ow. The fun tionalities
of the CAD tools may be ategorized as follows.
35
1 2
Behavioral Description
Behavior to RTL Compilation
7
Register Transfer Level
3
Properties
Equivalence Checking
(Temporal,
Causal)
FSM Verification
Logic Synthesis
8
4
Timing & Gate and Standard Cell Level
Structural (Netlist)
Constraints Structural & Timing
Equivalence Checking
Verification
Physical Synthesis
Physical Synthesis
6
5 Extraction
Placement
Device Level
Layout Level
Layout Vs Schematic(LVS)
Figure 5.1: A Typi al CAD Flow

36
Modelling: Constru tion of omputational models that apture the behavior or stru ture of the
design. Modelling a tivities range from physi ally based hara terization of semi-
ondu tor devi es to high level des ription of large VLSI systems. Computational
modelling aids in lude textual and graphi al languages and notations for des ription
of models. There are numerous modelling formalisms for apturing the des ription
of dierent abstra tions of VLSI systems. The hardware des ription languages like
Verilog [57, 58, 59℄ and VHDL [60, 61℄ are large and multiparadigm languages and
support several system modelling methods. The abstra tions of modelling formalisms
in lude behavioral, data ow, register transfer level (RTL), gate level, boolean expres-
sions, state ma hine, transistor level and physi al layout level. Figure 5.1 shows some
of these abstra tions in the ontext of a typi al CAD ow.
Simulation: Dynami exe ution of a omputational model that is equivalent to the exe ution of the
design. Simulations are equivalent to the real systems in the aspe ts of interest and not
in totality. Simulation, in the ontext of VLSI, is done at dierent levels of abstra tion
and with dierent requirements of a ura y. Usually a trade o is made between
a ura y and performan e. At one extreme there are pro ess based simulators that
simulate the physi s of semi ondu tor ele troni s of devi es and at the other extreme
are behavioral simulators that exe ute the high level spe i ations of a system as a
whole. Between the extremes there are devi e level analog simulators like SPICE [42℄
and Spe tre (by Caden e In .), symboli simulators like SIRSIM[43℄, event driven (eg.
IRSIM [39℄, I arus Verilog et .) and y le a urate simulators (like Cy lone VHDL and
Verilog Compiled Simulator (VCS) by Synopsys In ., f. http://www.synopsys. om)
for gate level and register transfer level models, all atering to dierent aspe ts and
abstra tions of a design.
Synthesis: Derivation of an implementation from a spe i ation. The goal of ele troni de-
sign automation (EDA) is to tape out omplete and orre t hips from high level
spe i ations. This end is a hieved by several stages of synthesis, ea h of whi h
pushes the designs loser to their nal realization. Synthesis is done at many lev-
els of abstra tion. High up in the synthesis gamut is what is known as behavioral
synthesis involving issues like operation s heduling, formation of fun tional units, de-
signing storage onguration and inter onne ting the storage and fun tional units
[45, 46℄. Lower down the rungs is physi al synthesis involving translation of netlists
into foundry-ready layout. Two ommonly used holisti digital synthesis tools are Syn-
opsys Design CompilerTM ( .f.r. http://www.synopsys. om) and Caden e AmbitTM
37
( .f.r. http://www. aden e. om) suite.

Analysis: Reasoning about and/or extra ting hara teristi s of a design. Despite eorts, a purely
feed-forward VLSI design pipeline is not yet in pla e. Validation and testing ontinues
to onsume the major timeshare in a VLSI design y le. Analysis is a major ompo-
nent (besides simulation) of the pro ess of validation. Analysis is a very broad term
en ompassing a large number of a tivities like fun tional veri ation, timing veri a-
tion, fun tion extra tion, he king of ele tri al and geometri onstraints et .
Formal veri ation of VLSI systems is an area in analysis where many new results
have been reported re ently. The two main approa hes adopted in this area are as
follows.
{ Symboli ally prove theorems on some algebrai des ription of the system. For
example in [44℄ an appli ative language is used to model the data- ow imple-
mentation of the system and its behavioral abstra tion and the axioms inherent
in the appli ative language are used in proving equivalen e of the two.
{ Model he k the system. There are some tiny languages for spe ifying patterns
of trees, paths and subgraphs that an be mat hed on labelled graphs. CTL,
QCTL, WQCTL, CTL*, LTL and regular expression are to name a few su h
languages [6, 7, 11, 10, 12, 26, 28℄. The system is abstra ted as a labelled graph
and the desired properties are modelled as patterns in those pattern languages
so that mat hing the patterns with the system graph is equivalent to he king
the properties.
The results of analysis are typi ally fed ba k to a sear h pro ess that adjusts the param-
eters of the design spa e, and the sear h pro eeds as iterations of design adjustments and
evaluations. This is the quintessential stru ture of a VLSI design ow in whi h analysis
plays the role of an evaluation fun tion of a sear h pro ess.
There are many su h feedba k loop steps in the design ow, in luding steps with the human
designer in the loop to make design adjustments or hanges vis a vis the analyzers' results.
The dashed lines in Figure 5.1 show the role of analyzers whose outputs are fed ba k to the
human-in-the-loop steps in a typi al modern VLSI CAD ow. The most general solutions
of many analysis problems are omputationally hard and pra ti al solutions are based on
simplifying assumptions. These assumptions ontinue to get violated in the most aggressive
design eorts and hen e new analyzers be ome ne essary to a ommodate the broken as-
sumptions. One more s ope for analysis tools is the ontemporary s enario in whi h neither
the initial design nor synthesis tools an be fully trusted, yet it is extremely important to
38
guarantee orre tness as any error an be immensely expensive. To that end it is ustom-
ary to write redundant spe i ations that are dedu ible from the design intent or the initial
spe i ation and verify the designs against them. The analysis tools over a wide spe trum
of design evaluation requirements and omprise timing analzers, noise analyzers, symboli
theorem provers, equivalen e he kers, model he kers, ele tri al rule he kers, geometri
rule he kers, physi al layout to netlist extra tors, transistor logi extra tors and so on.
The design abstra tion between the RTL and the nal physi al level lies in the regime of
netlists. The netlists represent undire ted ele tri al onne tivity between ells and devi es
in a ir uit. Quite a lot of analysis and attention is required in the netlist level and a num-
ber of analysis tools are deployed on this abstra tion to validate several properties of the
system. The ow ar hite ture is generally so designed that the tools ommuni ate among
themselves by annotating and pro essing annotations of the netlist representation. The
annotation of netlists by tools makes this abstra tion a knowledge ri h representation. A
lot of useful validation an be done by reasoning about a ri hly annotated netlist stru ture.
This thesis presents a ni e formalism and tool to this end. The stru tural reasoning engine
proposed through this thesis intends to serve the EDA world as an analysis tool to enable
he king a wide range of stru tural properties of netlists. The engine is designed to sport
an expressive de larative language that an be used to query and manipulate netlists.
5.2 Reasoning about Netlists

5.2.1 Netlists
Netlist is an abstra tion of VLSI systems whi h represents the stru ture of inter onne tions
between the onstituent omponents of the system. The netlist is essentially a topologi al
model albeit potentially annotated with geometri , ele tri al, fun tional or other semanti
properties of the onstituents. Stru tural inter onne tions represent the way the ompo-
nents move signals ba k and forth a ross ondu ting paths or wires. A netlist, as the name
suggests, is represented by a olle tion of what are alled nets, and nets are on eptional
olle tions of pins or ports of omponents that are ele tri ally onne ted.
The most important idea in a ir uit onne tivity representation is that of nets. A net is a
single ele tri al path in a ir uit that has the same signal value at all its points. The pins
on omponents that are ele tri ally onne ted to arry the same signal are said to belong
to the same net.
Figure 5.2 shows two netlists with nets shown as thi k lines and named as n1 ; n2 ; : : : et .
The red ir les in Fig. 5.2 denote the pins of the devi es and gates. The on ept of a net
is important in many steps of design and analysis. Designers often want to see an entire
39
n1
VDD n1
n2
n2
n3
n6 n4
n3
n5
(A) (B)
Figure 5.2: Two Netlists.
net so that they an see the path of a given signal. This path will then identify the origin
of the signal and those omponents that use the signal as an input. Some design styles
enfor e that only one omponent may output to a net, while there are many in whi h mul-
tiple omponents may output to a single net. In some ases, the multiple outputs ombine
logi ally to produ e a omposite net signal ( alled a wired-or or a wired-and, depending
on how the sour es ombine). In other ases, the ir uit timing is planned so that only
one omponent will output to the net at any given time, and the other omponents will
have ina tive outputs. The ability to visualize a ir uit by nets is therefore important in
understanding the paths between omponents.
Nets are used in simulation be ause, viewed abstra tly, a ir uit is merely a olle tion of
gating omponents and their onne tions. For an event based simulator a net is identied
with a signal node. Ea h gating omponent when a tivated by a hange in their input sig-
nals (on input nets), in turn generate an event that hanges the signal value on its output
nets after the proper gating delay. For a low level simulator like SPICE, ea h net in a ir uit
orresponds to a nodal variable and a nodal equation.
Thus the nets, being the most important element in the netlist model, will play a entral
role in the netlist reasoning engine to be presented through this thesis.
5.2.2 Types of Netlists
Designers typi ally identify several dierent kinds of netlists that arise in dierent phases
in the design ow. The highest level among them are the ones that are either the result
of logi synthesis or manual logi design or a ombination of the two. This type of netlists
40
may be referred to as sour e netlists. Sin e in a digital ow su h netlists are in terms of

logi gates and ip- ops they are also alled gate level netlists. In ase of ustom manual
design they may ontain bare transistors too. In the sour e netlists the library ells are
treated as primitive omponents. For the sake of detailed hara terization of properties of
library ells, devi e level equivalent netlists are extra ted from library ells' isolated layouts.
Sour e netlists, when expanded in terms of these library hara terized netlists are referred
to as hara terized netlists. The lowest level of netlists of a design are the ones obtained by
extra tion from the omplete layout of a design to extra t all instan es of transistors and
passive devi es. Su h netlists are alled extra ted netlists. Figure 5.3 shows some of the
situations where the dierent kinds of netlists appear in a VLSI design ow.
Interesting and hallenging problems arise when we analyze dierent types of netlists in
Schematic
HDL
Capture
Library Cells
Synthesis
Source Netlist
Custom
manual entries Linking to
and modifications charactarized
library cells
Characterized Netlist
Extracted Netlist
Passive RLC Networks
Layout, floorplanning
Parasitic Extraction
Interconnect Extraction Layout
Figure 5.3: Dierent Kinds of Netlists
isolation or together. One big hallenge is that of the sheer size of these netlists that run into
several gigabytes of data. Among other hallenges is to make their representation amenable
to dierent kinds of pro essing as required for dierent analysis methods.
41
5.2.3 Reasoning Problems in Netlist
Among the possible aspe ts of interest in the analysis of VLSI netlists, it's the fun tional
behavior that has been re eiving the maximum attention. Fun tional reasoning is usually
about fun tional veri ation but it is also used in other analyses like he king sensitizability
of of paths in the netlists.
Re ently the s alability of fun tional analysis has re eived a major boost with the de-
ployment of ordered binary de ision diagrams (or OBDDs) [5℄, a anoni al representation
of boolean expressions. Some fun tional reasoning solutions use the anoni al nature of
OBDDs to he k fun tional orre tness of ir uits (for example whether a given net in a
transistor netlist outputs a given boolean expression).
Currently fun tional reasoning is at a stage of development where several new ideas are
oming up from the a ademia of whi h quite a few are nding pla e in ommer ial veri-
ation/debugging steps of design ows. On the other hand, stru tural reasoning about
netlists, despite being an old idea[38℄, has not re eived as mu h attention from the VLSI
CAD ommunity.
The main dieren e between stru tural and fun tional aspe ts is that the stru tural view
of netlists strongly depends on the te hnology library used in the synthesis and an not
be derived merely (te hnology independently) from the abstra t spe i ation of the system
while the fun tional view is meant to be equivalent to its spe i ation irrespe tive of the
devi e te hnology involved.
Consequently stru tural reasoning is not done with mu h regard to spe i ations of indi-
vidual systems or designs and is done spe i ally for te hnologies and design styles. Thus
it is ommon to nd stru tural reasoning appear as hard oded in CAD tools.
The obje tives of stru tural reasoning on netlists reported so far may be ategorized as
follows.
Stru tural omparison to establish that two netlists are stru turally identi al [21, 23℄.
Sub ir uit mat hing to lo ate the o urren es of given sub ir uits in a stru tural netlist
[20℄.
Stru tural debugging and veri ation to sear h or isolate patterns in a ir uit [38, 47℄.
Graph grammar mat hing to establish onforman e with design styles spe ied by the
grammar [24℄.
42
De larative um pro edural query and manipulation of netlists [22, 49℄.

Among the above, most of the stru tural omparison and sub ir uit mat hing problems are
NP-hard, yet the reported results [21, 23, 20℄ laim of fast performing implementations for
pra ti al ir uits. They do nd good appli ations in omparing layouts with transistor level
s hemati s and appear as hard oded implementations spe ializing in mat hing netlists in
the Layout Vs S hemati (LVS) tools.
On the other hand, the obje tives of graph grammar mat hing, stru tural debugging and
de larative query/manipulation require relatively generi reasoning and an expressive inter-
fa e. Towards an expressive interfa e, [38℄ introdu es a language, LEXTOC (Language for
EXpressing TOpologi al Constraints), [24℄ uses a graphi al language for expressing graph
grammars, [47℄ presents a de larative topology oriented language (dubbed VETO-LISP)
and [22℄ uses a small language inspired by AWK [41℄ to express sub ir uit patterns and
a tions to be invoked on mat hing sub ir uits. The language interfa e is the key to their
generi ity and power whi h enables diverse reasoning without resorting to general purpose
programming languages. These languages are so lose to their problem domain - i.e. query-
ing netlists in some form or the other, that reasoning tasks an be written using them very
su in tly.
As regards their relevan e, the generi stru tural debuggers (let us all them ustom rea-
soning engines as opposed to standard hardwired ones like netlist omparators) are more
relevant now than ever before. Corre tness of netlists by onstru tion may be assumed
only in ase of netlists generated by sili on ompilers in an ideal situation. Maybe that
situation will arrive on e sili on ompilers gain a high level of maturity and when design
pro esses will stop tweaking the outputs of sili on ompilers. But as we are moving lose
to the physi al limits of the devi e te hnologies the ommer ial designs are using more and
more ustom optimization (manual pla ement et .) to get the most out of the available
devi e te hnologies. What transpires of this is that the utting edge designs are usually
omplex assemblies of hand rafted designs, standard ells, ma ro ells and ells generated
by sili on ompilers. Moreover, the oexisten e of analog and digital ells on single hips
(typi al in SOCs) requires ustom hand rafting thereby leaving no room for the assumption
of orre tness by onstru tion.
Thus it remains to be an important problem to reason about the netlist abstra tion of
ir uits. Some ontexts where stru tural reasoning problems about netlists arise are listed
as follows.
A dynami CMOS te hnique named NORA [48℄ requires that there should be no path
through stati CMOS gates from the outputs of a -C2MOS gate to the inputs of a
43
-n-dynami or a -p-dynami blo k.

Some design styles disallow PMOS transistor hannels onne ted to VSS or NMOS
hannels onne ted to VDD. In a netlist extra ted from layout a violating ongura-
tion may onne t an NMOS hannel to VDD through a resistive path, whi h needs
to be dete ted.
Be ause of the layout pra ti e of transistor folding, a single transistor in a s hemati
an be implemented as several parallel transistors in a layout, and the extra tor may
infer additional passive devi es between parallel transistors. For an LVS to su eed,
this variation has to be stru turally reasoned about.
It is a violation of CMOS design rules to use a net that does not have a path to VDD
through PMOSFET hannels, as input to any gate. Possibility of its violation may be
ruled out in a design involving library ells but in hand rafted layouts it is not very
unlikely to appear.
Combinational y les are prohibited in most design styles. It is often of interest to
he k a gate level netlist for y les that don't pass through ip- ops.
In testing, it is often of interest to determine the input one of a net, i.e. the olle tion
of nets that have signal paths to that net.
Sometimes improper hold violation onstraints make the synthesis tool introdu e long
serial hains of buers and/or inverters in the netlist to introdu e large delays. All
onstraints get satised that way and it is impossible to lo ate them by looking at the
s hemati but they slow down the ir uit unne essarily. Custom stru tural reasoning
an help lo ating them.
For larger designs it's virtually impossible to run analog simulation. Event based and
y le a urate fun tional simulators (like Verilog, Cy lone VHDL, IRSIM et .) are
fast enough but work only for digital abstra tions. Nominally digital hips may have
analog sub ir uits like sense ampliers that an not be handled by digital simulators.
But if the sense amplier blo ks an be lo ated and repla ed by inverters then the
ir uit an be handled by digital simulators, while preserving the fun tional properties.
This requires stru tural reasoning about netlists.
The existing approa hes and tools for netlist reasoning do handle some reasoning prob-
lems but with limited s alability and domain of appli ability. Firstly, most of them (ex ept
[24℄) applies only to transistor level netlists, and [24℄'s approa h using graph grammars
44
ould not be applied to ommon reasoning problems. [38℄ and [47℄ are expressive but are
reportedly slow for larger transistor netlists. [49℄ is simple and powerful but exa ts high
reativity on the part of the user. [22℄ is re ent and omprehensive but is appli able only
to transistor level netlists.
None of the above reasoning approa hes deploy any of the re ent symboli methods (OB-
DDs [5℄ in parti ular) that have boosted the s alability in reasoning about fun tional tra es
of VLSI systems. In this s enario it appears extremely important to to formulate a new
approa h that is more expressive, appli able to all lasses of netlists, eÆ ient, and leverages
s alability from symboli omputing methods. This is the gap that is attempted to be
bridged by the work present through this thesis.
5.2.4 Representation of Netlists
A omputer model of netlists is a prerequisite for representing, storing, manipulating and

reasoning about netlists. This is usually done using a netlist database. Although the re-
sear h ontent of the presented work fo usses on stru tural reasoning about netlists, the
omplete work goes signi antly beyond that, presenting a system that may be used as a
substratum for netlist level EDA appli ations. This may oer a middle ground between
developing from s rat h and using o the shelf appli ations. Wel ome to what we all the
Netlist Management System (NMS), a tool and a software omponent that addresses the
problem of netlist data representation, management and last but ertainly not the least -
stru tural reasoning about them. It in ludes a number of powerful features like - an eÆ ient
representation of netlists, interfa e to ommon netlist formats, an intuitive programming
and extension interfa e, a netlist reasoning engine and a s ripting interfa e.
The overall obje tive of the netlist management system is to provide a holisti platform
software for netlists, not just an implementation of the reasoning engine to prove the point.
The EDA appli ations developed on the top of it, besides the ones reported in this thesis are
an inter onne t delay al ulator [54℄, a gate level timing analyzer [55℄ and a ombinational
equivalen e he ker [56℄.
EDA data management produ ts and solutions, in luding those for netlist level data, are
available ommer ially - Synopsys' MilkyWay (http://www.synopsys. om) and InterraEDA's
Netlist Obje t Model (NOM) (www.interraeda. om) being two well known ones. Sili on In-
tegration Initiative (SI2)'s open sour e design database - OpenA ess (www.openeda. om)
is a omprehensive representation of many abstra tions of VLSI design in luding netlists.
Its li ensing terms disallowing sour e redistribution and interfa e modi ation makes it an
inappropriate substratum for this a ademi resear h undertaking, else its use would have
45
signi antly redu ed the development task.

With a very little eort the SQUARE framework an be interfa ed to any of the above
netlist representations.
The following are the requirements that had driven the spe i obje tives of the NMS.
As has already been indi ated, the main s ienti ontent of the work is the formula-
tion of a reasoning framework for netlists. The engine should fa ilitate the following.
{ Isolation of ex eptional sub- ir uits.
{ Examining the presen e of ex eptional paths and ir uit patterns.
{ Enfor ing that the netlist does not ontain patterns designated as illegal for a
parti ular design methodology.
{ Substitution or manipulation of spe ied paths or sub- ir uits.
The reasoning requires a representation to a t upon, thus a suitable netlist repre-
sentation is required. A main-memory data stru ture is required as the mode of its
implementation for the sake of eÆ ien y.
For populating the representation with available netlists, a read/write interfa e for
the ommon netlist formats is required.
Moreover the reasoning will be more ee tive if it an a ess annotations made by
other EDA tools. Hen e a ni e API of the representation is desirable that may instigate
development of more EDA tools around it, thereby fa ilitating more annotation of its
populated instan es.
Appli ation development may be further eased by an extension interfa e like s hema
des ription language from whi h the netlist representation database an be generated.
The bottomline of EDA is automation, and nothing automates like a s ripting inter-
fa e. Thus su h a s ripting interfa e is required that an a ess the omplete NMS
API and its appli ations or servi es.
The ar hite tural ornerstones of NMS, as derived from the aforementioned requirements
are as follows.
The Netlist Database : the ore representation.
Database Generator : an interfa e to generate the database ode automati ally from
the s hema.
46
Netlist Readers and Writers : for Verilog, CDL and SPEF.

A Stru tural Query And Reasoning Engine (with a ronym - SQUARE): onsisting of
a query language and a C++ ode generating ompiler for reasoning about stru tural
des riptions.
An Automati ally Generated S ripting Interfa e : using the T l [50℄ extension lan-
guage.
Figure 5.4 shows the various omponents of the netlist management system. The design of
the query language (SQUARE) is inspired and in uen ed by the interfa es of the existing
netlist reasoning tools [38, 47, 22℄, some temporal logi s [26, 28, 7℄, regular expressions
[9℄, some existing graph query languages (eg. Graphlog[17℄, GOQL[16℄ and G+ [19℄) and
relational al ulus [33, 34℄. If we disregard the temporal and ausal onnotations of some
temporal logi s, they an be viewed as tiny pattern des ription languages to mat h path,
tree and subgraph patterns on dire ted graphs. This view has been used in reasoning about
labelled graphs abstra ted from netlists.
The subsequent se tions present the netlist management system and its underlying on epts
in greater detail.
5.3 Overview of the Netlist Management System

The software implementation of the NMS is fairly well pa kaged and reusable. The software
design is introdu ed brie y in the following se tions.
5.3.1 The Netlist Information Model and its Representation
Most of the VLSI design tools need to deal with some or other forms of netlist representa-
tion. Some representations losely follow the syntax of the stru tural hardware des ription
languages. In the others they are some kind of abstra t models like graphs and hypergraphs
(a.k.a. relations) as suited for the appli ations.
Representation is a very important problem in the design of any CAD system. A good
representation allows the system to be onveniently stored, a essed and manipulated while
a bad representation is wasteful and non-s alable.
The primary a tivity in formulating an information model is hara terizing the entities of
the domain and relationships between them. The main entities of the domain of netlists are
nets, ells, devi es, pins, ports et . The most important relation in a netlist representation
is that of onne tivity, whi h is a binary relation on the union of the sets of pins and ports.
47
SQUARE NDDL
Query Schema
SQUARE Compiler NDDL Compiler
Meta−Objects
Query Intermediate Representation
FSA AST
NMS Shell
1111111111111
0000000000000 1111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000 111111111111111
000000000000000
000000000000000
111111111111111
0000000000000
1111111111111 0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
NMS Database API
0000000000
1111111111 000000000000000
111111111111111
Scripting
0000000000000
1111111111111
Compiled square
0000000000000
1111111111111 0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
00000000000000000
11111111111111111 0000000000
1111111111 000000000000000
111111111111111
Interface
Queries
0000000000000
1111111111111 0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
00000000000000000
11111111111111111 0000000000
1111111111
NMS
000000000000000
111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
The NMS Core
00000000000000000
11111111111111111 0000000000
1111111111
Schema
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
00000000000000000
11111111111111111 0000000000
1111111111
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
A Netlist Representation
00000000000000000
11111111111111111 0000000000
1111111111
Extensions
11111111111111
00000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
00000000000000000
11111111111111111 0000000000
1111111111
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111
Netlist Readers/Writers
00000000000000
11111111111111
0000000000
1111111111
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111 00000000000000
11111111111111
Verilog,CDL,SPEF etc.
0000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111 00000000000000
11111111111111
00000000000000
11111111111111
1111111111111
0000000000000
0000000000000
1111111111111
0000000000000
1111111111111 1111111111111
0000000000000
User Applications
0000000000000
1111111111111 0000000000000
1111111111111
User Applications
0000000000000
1111111111111
0000000000000
1111111111111 0000000000000
1111111111111
Figure 5.4: Overview of the NMS System

48
The semanti s of ele tri al onne tivity implies symmetry, transitivity and re exivity of
this relation, thereby indu ing equivalen e partitions in the set of pins, ea h partition or-
responding to a net. There is yet another partition of the set of pins as indu ed by the
binary relation of two pins' belonging to the same ell or devi e. The netlist representation
of NMS re e ts this formalized stru ture in the information model.
The pragmati advantage of this formalization is that it lends itself to mapping onto labelled
abstra t graph stru tures that are suited for formal reasoning. The graph mapping follows
very naturally. Ea h equivalen e partition may either indu e a vertex in the graph mapping
or ea h ordered pair of pins in the partition may indu e a dire ted edge in the graph. The
labels of the edges arise from propositions based on ir uit semanti s. This stru ture an
be queried by SQUARE to fa ilitate lo ation and testing the presen e of a wide range of
ir uit patterns.
On a dierent note, an extremely desirable feature of a netlist representation is its power
and exibility. In VLSI design, the need for new analysis methods leads to development
of more and more tools. All these tools manipulate dierent information, whi h must be
represented. Therefore the representation must be exible enough to in orporate new in-
formation wherever and whenever needed. Generi ally speaking, every obje t in the netlist
database is a re ord that ontains data items. These items are attributes that have names,
values, and often spe i types asso iated with them. For example a transistor may have
as attributes its length, width, type, orientation, position et . A parasiti resistor may
have as its attributes its onne tions and its resistan e. In pra ti e, there is a never-ending
set of attributes that must be represented, aused by the never-ending set of synthesis and
analysis tools. Ea h tool is used to manipulate a dierent aspe t of the obje t, so ea h
introdu es new attributes. Given that a representation should pla e no limits on the de-
sign a tivity, it is ne essary that the reation of obje t attributes be exible. Sin e it is
impossible to determine in advan e exa tly whi h data entries are going to be needed when
planning a re ord organization, the program must be able to reate new attribute entries
during design. A good s heme to ensure this is to have a run-time evolving meta-stru ture
underlying the database that allows the obje t s hemas to evolve dynami ally (for exam-
ple by using ommon lisp obje t system (CLOS) [52, 53℄, with its meta-obje t proto ol
(MOP) [51℄ or even XML as the basis of the database). Another possible s heme is to use
linked list of attributes and their values asso iated with ea h obje t. In su h a s heme,
ea h netlist obje t onsists of a list head that links its attribute/value pair re ords. It has
the disadvantage of making the system very slow be ause traversal of a list is required to
nd an obje t's attribute values. To speed up attribute a ess, a hashing table or even a
balan ed sear h tree of attribute/value pairs an be stored in the obje ts. These dynami
49
solutions ensure exibility but auses heavy spa e and time overheads. No matter how we
store the attribute/value pairs a worst ase logarithmi time sear h is unavoidable, let alone
the spa e overheads.
To solve this problem NMS provides ompile time extensibility in whi h the users or appli-
ation developers an spe ify the required attributes in a tiny s hema spe i ation language
( alled the netlist database des ription language (NDDL) ) and the database s hema
hanges are a ordingly generated from it.
5.3.2 Integration of SQUARE with the NMS
The SQUARE language is a small language for expressing queries on labelled dire ted
graphs, and serves as the basis for netlist stru tural reasoning in NMS. The SQUARE
ompiler generates a C++ ode from the query, whi h in turn evaluates the query. A
labelled graph is inferred from the netlist, in whi h the nets are mapped to verti es and
ea h of the omponents ( ells) indu e several edges orresponding to ea h possible pair of its
pins. The mapping an be the other way round too, i.e. ells indu e verti es and nets indu e
edges, but in pra ti e the former mapping was found more useful to reasoning problems.
There are quite a few basi query expressions in SQUARE that are omposed using a
relational al ulus, whi h applies orthogonally to the basi expressions as will be explained
subsequently.
A basi set of query expressions are based on mat hing paths in a ir uit graph, satisfying a
given regular expression. The regular expressions are quite expressive and are parti ularly
amenable to mat hing paths in a labelled graph. The alphabet of the regular expressions are
propositions on the edges of the graph. In SQUARE, the propositions are dened separately
from the queries and there is a small built-in utility library of propositions related to the
NMS semanti s. The propositions are referen ed by name in the query expressions.
For example, the following query subexpression indi ates bindings of all su h pairs of nets
(in the netlist being queried) to the variables x and y, for whi h there exists a path in the
ir uit graph satisfying the regular expression (drain to sour e * sink is vdd). Here
drain to sour e and sink is vdd are atomi propositions, and '*' is the usual Kleene
losure operator of regular expressions [9℄.
(exists-path (x y) (drain_to_sour e * sink_is_vdd))
As another example, the following expression involving just one variable x indi ates all su h
bindings to x that has a self rea hable path through edges from input pins to output pins,
(relevant in a gate level netlist). The '+' in the expression is the positive losure operator of
50
regular expressions [9℄. A non-empty resulting set of bindings obtained on a netlist for the
following expression will indi ate the presen e of a ombinational loop.
(exists-path (x x) (in_to_out +))
The fa t that we mat h paths through edges from input pins to output pins of omponents
is en oded in the implementation of the edge predi ate in to out.
The ompiled query evaluator, whi h is a pie e of C++ ode, is generated by the query
ompiler for ea h query. The invo ation of the runtime evaluator is done through a all to
an interpreter ommand.
A query is essentially des ribed as a pattern-a tion pair. The a tion is a blo k of C++
ode that is exe uted in an environment that lexi ally has a ess to ea h of the bindings of
the free variables in the query. After omputation of all the bindings of the variables, the
a tion ode is repeatedly exe uted over ea h of the bindings (i.e ea h satisfying assignment
of the variables). The order of traversal of the assignments is arbitrary.
For better performan e, users an spe ify relationships like ontainment or disjointness
among propositions to help the SQUARE ompiler to generate a better ompiled evaluator.
Three examples of queries are presented in Figures 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7, with semanti s stated
in the respe tive aptions. In parti ular, the query in Fig. 5.7, when invoked with the name
of the VDD net as its argument will print all the input nets of the transistor level netlist.
(square omb y le :args ()

:vars (v1)
:filter-edge (through_ff)
:query
(exists-path (V1 V1) (in_to_out +))
:a tion " out<<V1->getName()<<endl;"
)
Figure 5.5: Query to print all nets belonging to a y li path not passing through a ip- op.
51
(square internalnode :args ()

:vars (V1 V2 V3)
:query
(and
(exists (V1)
)
(exists (V3)
)
)
:a tion " out<<V2->getName()<<\" \";"
)
Figure 5.6: Query to print all the internal nets in a netlist.
(square hannel_unrea hable :args (("string" "netname1"))

:vars (V1 V2)
:query
(and (upred net_with_name (V1) "netname1" )
(not (exists-path (V1 V2) (along_ hannel +))))
:a tion " out<<V3->getName()<<\" \";"
)
Figure 5.7: Query to print all su h nets that are not rea hable from a given net through
FET hannels in a transistor netlist.
Chapter 6
The Implementation of SQUARE

The semanti s of the regular path expressions in SQUARE deviates from the usual regular
expressions on hara ter streams in that the alphabet elements (propositions) for SQUARE
expressions are not disjoint. This introdu es some additional omplexity in evaluating
the all-paths subexpressions of an SQUARE query. If all the NFA states onstituting
a DFA state has outgoing transitions on symbols (p1 ; p2 ; : : : ; pn ) then the DFA state will
have 2n outgoing transitions with ea h label as logi al onjun tion of the elements of a
subset of fp1 ; p2 ; : : : ; pn g. Here, the absen e of pk a tually means falsehood of pk in the
orresponding onjun tive form. For example, for three propositions fp1 ; p2 ; p3 g the subsets
will be (:p1 ^:p2 ^:p3), (:p1 ^:p2 ^ p3 ), (:p1 ^ p2 ^:p3), (:p1 ^ p2 ^ p3), (p1 ^:p2 ^:p3),
(p1 ^ :p2 ^ p3 ), (p1 ^ p2 ^ :p3 ) and (p1 ^ p2 ^ p3 ).
Some of these subsets may be ruled out by some apriori knowledge about the proposi-
tions. If some relationships among propositions are stated in the query spe i ation then
the SQUARE ompiler attempts to optimize the evaluation by eliminating some subsets
des ribed above. SQUARE supports spe i ation of two su h relationships in the atomi
propositions - that of mutual ex lusion (saying that the said propositions don't simultane-
ously hold) and that of ontainment (truth of one proposition implies the truth of another).
Even one of these two onstru ts, when oupled with the onstru t of negation of proposi-
tions, would have suÆ ed to spe ify any boolean onstraint among propositions but both
of them are supported by SQUARE for the sake of intuitiveness.
In parti ular, true and :true are two spe ial propositions in SQUARE that evaluates to
true and false respe tively on all edges of a ir uit graph.
52
53
6.0.3 Algorithmi s and Ar hite ture
Most of the nontrivial graph queries are NP- omplete or harder problems. The sizes of the
ir uits are large enough not to let us dream of running an algorithm super-polynomial in
their size. There however are ases when NP omplete queries may still be answered. These
are the ases in whi h the query evaluation is NP omplete but if we keep the query xed
(i.e. the query is onsidered a part of the problem des ription and not an input) then the
ost of the evaluation algorithms would be polynomial in the size of the ir uit. We all
su h queries ir uit-size-tra table as they are easy in terms of the ir uit size. SQUARE,
by its syntax and semanti s, avoids su h queries that are not ir uit-size-tra table.
SQUARE evaluation engine uses symboli omputation with ordered binary de ision dia-
grams (OBDDs) in evaluating an aspe t of the queries that is PSpa e hard in terms of the
query size. OBDDs are also deployed in evaluating the ir uit-size-tra table rea hability
queries.
The omplexity of mat hing regular expressions in ir uit graphs depends on what we in-
tend to mat h with the regular expressions. If we intend he k for the existen e of a simple
path (a path with no y le) satisfying a regular expression in edge labels, the problem turns
out to be NP- omplete in terms of the size of the graph [3℄ ex ept in a few trivial ases
[1, 2℄. Therefore this semanti s an not be evaluated eÆ iently.
On the other hand, the presen e of a path (a sequen e in whi h onse utive pairs are adja-
ent verti es in the graph) satisfying a regular expression an be established in polynomial
time [3℄. Despite its low ost, the semanti s of mat hing regular expressions with paths in
a graph was found quite useful in querying netlists.
There are some subproblems of SQUARE evaluation that are hard in terms of the size of
the query. De iding whether all paths between two verti es of the graph satisfy a given
regular expression turns out to be NP omplete. For the queries that require the above de-
ision, SQUARE evaluator omputes the automaton that re ognizes the omplement of the
language spe ied by the original regular expression. The absen e of any path re ognized
by the omplement automaton implies that all paths are mat hed by the original regular
expression. Computing the omplement automaton may require exponential spa e (and
time) in the size of the nondeterministi nite automaton that is obtained dire tly from
the query expression. However this ombinatorial explosion happens only over the query
expression, whi h when assumed to have a onstant bound, redu es the problem of query
evaluation to one of polynomial spa e and time omplexity.
A sket h of the algorithm for existen e of regular paths goes as follows.
Compute the automaton A that re ognizes the regular path.
54
Treat the ir uit graph like an automaton and ompute its automata theoreti inter-
se tion P with A.
Compute transitive losure on P , whi h is the regular-path losure on the ir uit
graph.
The SQUARE subexpressions generate OBDDs involving variables that are free in the
subexpressions. The relational al ulus onstru ts are evaluated by omposing the OBDDs
of the subexpressions.
On a dierent front, the NDDL based generation of the netlist database involves some
very minor (almost impertinent) algorithm intensive pro essing (the most pertinent one
being the traversal of a type inheritan e DAG). Essentially the NDDL ompiler reates the
s hema data stru tures from a textual NDDL des ription and performs depth-rst traversal
and topologi al ordering of the inheritan e graph in the s hema in the pro ess of generating
the C++ ode for the netlist database of NMS.
The algorithms and analysis involved in the design and development of NMS are presented
in detail in hapter ??.
As regards the ar hite ture of the software implementation of NMS, most of its fun tional
omponents (ex ept the C++ ode generators, viz. the SQUARE and NDDL ompilers)
ommuni ate among themselves through native pro edure alls in the same pro ess spa e,
as shown by the bidire tional thi k arrows in Fig. 5.4. Thus the C++ linker is the basi
integration glue for NMS. The NDDL and SQUARE ompilers are separate programs that
generate ode for integration with the NMS, as indi ated in Fig. 5.4.
The s ripting interfa e of the NMS is reated by embedding a T l interpreter into the
NMS. An additional tool named Swig (http://www.swig.org) has been used to generate T l
wrappers of some C++ lasses and fun tions. The SQUARE ompiler is written in ommon
lisp using the freely available implementation lisp (http:// lisp. ons.org). The NMS uses
two spe ialized software omponents available freely in the publi domain, besides the usual
C/C++ runtime library implementations. They are as follows.
BUDDY : A BDD Pa kage from the IT-University of Copenhagen, Danmark, written
by Jorn Lind-Nielsen (buddyitu.dk).
T l : An extension language and embeddable interpreter (http://www.s ripti s. om)
[50℄.
There is plenty of room for optimizations and performan e enhan ements of NMS and
SQUARE, nevertheless the urrent performan e and eÆ a y of the system seems good
enough to be pra ti ally useful.
55
6.1 Evaluation of the all-paths Query

The semanti s of the regular all paths query has been explained earlier in hapter 3. Its
evaluation primitive requires as ertaining whether all possible paths from one parti ular
vertex to another in a graph satises a given regular expression on the edge labels. Theorem
6.1.1 establishes that Regular-All-Paths evaluation is NP-hard.
Theorem 6.1.1. All-Regular-Paths is NP-hard.
Proof: It is known that satisability of boolean formulas written in onjun tive normal form
(CNF) is NP-hard [30℄. We redu e an arbitrary instan e CNF-satisability to a Regular-
All-Paths instan e to prove it NP-hard. A CNF boolean formula F is a onjun tion of
several lauses ea h of whi h is disjun tion of several literals (variables or their negates).
We will try to prove F unsatisable, i.e. :F valid. In symboli ally omputing :F from F
(whi h is in CNF) we hange the inter- lause onjun tions to disjun tions, the intra- lause
disjun tions to onjun tions and negate ea h literal. As an example if
F = (x1 _ x2 _ x3 ) ^ (:x1 _ x3 _ x4 ) ^ (:x2 _ :x3 _ x4 ) (6.1.1)
then
:F = (:x1 ^ :x2 ^ :x3) _ (x1 ^ :x3 ^ :x4) _ (x2 ^ x3 ^ :x4): (6.1.2)
Constru t a graph with n + 1 verti es v0 ; v1 ; v2 ; : : : ; vn and no edges yet.
For ea h variable xi in F reate two edges from vi 1 to vi , one labelled with xi and the other
with :xi . The pre eding onstru tion for F in equation 6.1.1 is illustrated in Fig. 6.1. The
graph so formed will be the ontext for the Regular-All-Paths query orresponding to the
CNF-satisability instan e. Let us all this graph G.
X1 X2 X3 X4
V0 V1
X1 X2 X3 X4
Figure 6.1: A graph ontext onstru ted for CNF-sat.
Next, we onstru t a regular expression from :F . Re all that we had used a parti ular
arbitrarily hosen order of variables (viz. x1 ! x2 ! x3 : : : ! xn ) while onstru ting the
graph G. We need to onsistently use this order in onstru ting the regular expression as
follows. We rewrite ea h disjun tive lause in :F (with onjun tive terms within) in su h
a way that all the variables x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; : : : ; xn appear in the lause and in that order. If a
56
variable xj was originally absent in the lause ll its position with a spe ial term (xj _:xj ).
Having done that, we do the following substitutions on the boolean expression to interpret
it as a regular expression.
Substitute the ^s within the disjun tive lauses by the on atenation operator of regular
expressions.
Substitute the _ between the lauses by the disjun tion operator of regular expressions.
Terms within the disjun tive lauses, of the form (xj _ :xj ) (that arose due to the
absen e of the literal xj in the original lause) are interpreted as a single proposition.
Let us all the regular expression so interpreted . The NFA that an be easiy onstru ted
from is one in whi h there are as many linear bran hes from the start state as there were
disjun tive lauses in :F and ea h bran h has a length n ex luding the start state. One
su h automaton for :F given in equation 6.1.2 presented in Fig. 6.2.
X4 ,
X2 X3 X4
X1
X1 X2 , X2 X3 X4
X1 , X
1 X2 X3 X4
Figure 6.2: An NFA interpreted from a CNF expression.
With the above onstru tion in pla e, our laim is that the Regular-All-Paths for the
expression on the graph G evaluates to true if and only if :F is valid. It is lear that a path
from v0 to vn represents a parti ular assignment (a.k.a. interpretetion) of all the variables of
:F , and all the v0 ! vn paths in G, by the onstru tion, ompletely enumerates all possible
assignments of the variables in :F . Further, a v0 ! vn path's satisfying is equivalent
to the orresponding assignment's satisfying :F . Thus Regular-All-Paths(v0 ; vn ; ) is a
ne essary and suÆ ient ondition for the validity of :F . This proves that the onstru ted
instan e of Regular-All-Paths solves an arbitrary instan e of CNF-satisability.
Another related result is as follows.
57
Theorem 6.1.2. Regular-All-Paths is in o-NP.

Proof: The omplement of Regular-All-Paths(v0 ; vn ; ) is to as ertain whether it is false.
A erti ate for its being false is a path in the graph from v0 to vn , proved not to satisfy .
This an be done in polynomial time by testing non-existen e of a -path in the erti ate
path using the Exists-Regular-Path algorithm.
There is a well known result in automata theory that regular sets are losed under
omplement. A typi al proof of this statement pro eeds by onstru ting an automaton from
a given automaton, whi h a epts exa tly the omplement language of the given automaton.
For self ontainment we state the result and its proof as follows.
Theorem 6.1.3. Regular sets are losed under omplement.
Proof: We are required to prove that if L is a regular set and L , then L is
also a regular set. Let L be the language re ognized by a DFA M = hQ; 1 ; Æ; q0 ; F i andl
let L . First we may assume 1 = , for if there are symbols in 1 not in , we
may delete all su h transitions in M with symbols not in . The fa t that L assures
that we shall not thereby hange the language of M . If there are symbols in not in 1 ,
then by denition of M , none of these symbols appear in the words of L. We may therefore
introdu e a dead state d into M with Æ(d; a) = d for ea h a 2 , and Æ(q; a) = d for ea h
q 2 Q and for ea h a 2 1 .
Next the a epting states of M are made non-a epting and vi e versa. In parti ular d is
made a epting. The automaton so formed after these transformation learly a epts L.
It should be noted that the proof requires M to be deterministi and without transitions.
This result has signi an e in Regular-All-Paths evaluation. Given a regular expression
(or an automaton) we an ompute its omplement as above, and and non-existen e of a
omplement language path is equivalent all paths' satisfying the given expression. It would
appear at rst sight that sin e the onstru tion in Theorem 6.1.3 is linear time in the input
automaton, the all paths problem polynomially redu es to a path existen e problem (whi h
in turn an be solved in polynomial time). The problem here is that the onstru tion in
Theorem 6.1.3 requires the input automaton to be deterministi , but the automaton that we
an derive from the query in polynomial time is non-deterministi . Even if the automaton
so onstru ted appears stru turally deterministi , it should be noted that the propositions
don't form an alphabet disjoint form in that several propositions may simultaneouly hold
on a single edge. We use the following result in formulating our approa h to the evaluation.
Theorem 6.1.4. For a xed regular expression Regular-All-Paths may be omputed in time
polynomial in the size of the ontext graph.
Proof: If the regular expression is assumed xed, it is onsidered a part of the problem
58
and not its input. Thus we an ignore the ost of omputing its deterministi equivalent and
thereby its omplement. This redu es the problem of Regular-All-Paths to Exists-Regular-
Path , whi h in turn an be solved in polynomial time as shown in se tion 6.2.
We will use the fa t in Theorem 6.1.4 to divide the evaluation of the regular all paths
query into two sub-stages as follows.
Generation of an evaluator ode from a query.
Exe ution of the evaluator ode on an a tual graph ontext.
We guarantee that the se ond stage of evaluation i.e. exe ution of the generated evaluator
will take time polynomial in the size of the graph ontext.
The exploding aspe ts en ountered in generating the evaluator are as follows.
The number of DFA states orresponding to the query NFA may be exponential in the
number of NFA states (and hen e in the size of the regula expression in the query).
The number of outgoing transitions at any state is exponential in the number of
outgoing non-ex lusive predi ates.
While onstru ting the DFA from the NFA, the rst explosion ould not be prevented from
propagating to the running time of the exe ution of the generated evaluator. The se ond
explosion however ould be prevented from ae ting the evaluator's exe ution time. If the
number of propositions that an ause a valid transition from a state
6.2 Evaluation of the Exists-Path Query

Algorithm 6.1 iteratively omputes a relation ontaining pairs of nodes that are mutually
rea hable by some path satisfying the regular expression. In the algorithm, let R(n1 ; s1 ; n2 ; s2 )
be the relation that there is an edge from n1 to n3 whi h satises an (s1 ; s2 ) transition.
59
Algorithm 6.1.
AllPairExistsRegularPath
F R
while(true) begin
Fold F
H F [n3 =n2 ; s3 =s2 ; n2 =n1 ; s2 =s1 ℄
G 9s2; n2 (H ^ F )
F G[n2 =n3 ; s2 =s3 ℄
if(F == Fold ) break
end
return 9s1 ; s2 F ^ (s1 2 SSTART ) ^ (s2 2 SACCEPTING)
end
Chapter 7
Results
60
Chapter 8
Con lusion and S ope for Future

Work
61
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Querying Cir

uits and other Labelled

Department of Computer S ien e and Engineering

Indian Institute of Te hnology, Kharagpur

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, KHARAGPUR

WEST BENGAL, INDIA

Copyright by Jayanta Majumder, 2004

Dated: De ember 2004

Dr. Chittaranjan Mandal

Date: De ember 2004

Permission is herewith granted to Indian Institute of Te hnology, Kharagpur to

THE AUTHOR RESERVES OTHER PUBLICATION RIGHTS, AND NEITHER

THE THESIS NOR EXTENSIVE EXTRACTS FROM IT MAY BE PRINTED OR

OTHERWISE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S WRITTEN PERMISSION.

USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL APPEARING IN THIS THESIS (OTHER

THAN BRIEF EXCERPTS REQUIRING ONLY PROPER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IN

SCHOLARLY WRITING) AND THAT ALL SUCH USE IS CLEARLY ACKNOWLEDGED.

Figure 1.2: A NAND gate implementation in CMOS.

5: (exists-undire ted-edge (x2 x4))

1.1 A PR-style Introdu tion

1.2.1 Debugging and Verifying Netlists

 Combinational y les are prohibited in most design styles. It is often of interest to

1.3 Data Model for SQUARE

whi h will hopefully be useful in several omputing appli ations.

1.4 Qui k Overview

1.5 Layout of the Thesis

Subje t Area and Appli ation Meaning of Verti es and Edges

Figure 1.3: Some Graph Models in Real World Appli ations

Expression Informal Meaning

(((:r *) or [:p r℄ * ) p true *) p holds on some edge on the path.

Mathemati al Tools and Notations

2.1 Stru tures : Sets, Tuples, Strings, Relations and Fun -

S2 is a superset of S1 ) and denote this statement by S1  S2 or S2  S2 . When two

For example by de nition of binary artesian produ t we have

2.2 Propositional Predi ate Logi

operator pre x notation in x notation meaning

p q p_q p^q p)q p,q pq

TODO: De ne propositional variables, (boolean) fun tions of variables, their rep-

2.3 Graphs : Basi De nitions

pair of edges is onne ted.

 The empty string f"g.

2.5 Des ribing Semanti s of Languages

TODO:Lambda notation, denotational notation, a small example of denotational de ni-

2.6 Relational Cal ulus using Binary De ision Diagrams

The SQUARE Language

Figure 3.1: A Labelled Graph.

Figure 3.2: A simple exists-path query

found 12 mat h(es)

Figure 3.3: Results of the query in gure 3.2

found 1 mat h(es)

found 2 mat h(es)

of them have a label string satisfying ((a b) +).

Integrating Appli ations with

Stru tural Query on Cir uits

Behavior to RTL Compilation

Figure 5.1: A Typi al CAD Flow

( .f.r. http://www. aden e. om) suite.

5.2 Reasoning about Netlists

Figure 5.2: Two Netlists.

may be referred to as sour e netlists. Sin e in a digital ow su h netlists are in terms of

Combinational y les are prohibited in most design styles. It is often of interest to

(((:r ) or [:p r℄ ) p true *) p holds on some edge on the path.

S2 is a superset of S1 ) and denote this statement by S1 S2 or S2 S2 . When two

For example by denition of binary artesian produ t we have

operator prex notation inx notation meaning

p q p_q p^q p)q p,q pq

TODO: Dene propositional variables, (boolean) fun tions of variables, their rep-

2.3 Graphs : Basi Denitions

The empty string f"g.

TODO:Lambda notation, denotational notation, a small example of denotational deni-

Figure 5.3: Dierent Kinds of Netlists

De larative um pro edural query and manipulation of netlists [22, 49℄.

-n-dynami or a -p-dynami blo k.

Netlist Readers and Writers : for Verilog, CDL and SPEF.