Escalante, Marco Antonio2024-08-132024-08-1319911991https://hdl.handle.net/1828/17753The automation of computer hardware design has received considerable attention in recent years. Expert systems, that incorporate explicit domain knowledge into problem-solving programs, have been successfully applied in design problems. DAME (Design Automation of Microprocessor-based systems using an Expert system approach) is a system capable of designing microprocessor-based systems from original specifications. In this thesis, the bus arbitration interface design module, a module of the DAME designer, is presented to illustrate the design process in DAME. The design philosophy followed by DAME requires that components include reference to abstractions of their interfacing capabilities. The design rules utilize this information to produce an abstract design which is subsequently instantiated. In particular, components are functionally modelled by their capabilities. These capabilities follow protocols to guarantee the proper communication. Actions are the elementary operations that describe the protocol sequence. Finally signals are the agents that convey the actions. The interface design strategy in DAME divides the interface problem into subproblems that deal with the component capabilities, and applies generic rules that instantiate an abstract interface design with the particular information from the participating components. The abstract interface design is carried out by merging action graphs that represent the involved protocols. The methodology outlined above is illustrated through an example involving the VMEbus.205 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis