Constrained REDO: An Alternative to REPLAY

C. W. Liew
L. I. Steinberg
Department of Computer Science
Rutgers University
New Brunswick NJ 08903
Email: liew@cs.rutgers.edu, lou@cs.rutgers.edu
Phone: (908)932-5229

Design optimization problems and VLSI microprocessor design in
particular, are complex problems with some characteristics that make
them very different from the problems that AI researchers have
traditionally studied.  Case based reasoning is a valuable tool that
can be used to make these problems tractable.  Traditional case based
methods with their use of REPLAY based techniques are unsuitable
because they rely on the use of design records and decision trees.
CONSTRAINED-REDO is a new technique that does not use design records
but instead relies on an analysis of the solution and the propagation
of information through constraints.  These constraints are not on the
design decisions but only refer to the mapping between the problem
specification and the solution. The technique has been tested in a
real-world domain, that of VLSI microprocessor design.