LONDON — Three computer aided design tools that make up the Cascade package out of Columbia University are available for download, according to discussions in an asynchronous logic newsletter.

The three tools — Minimalist, ATN-Opt and DES analyzer — are available for download from the Cascade web page: http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~nowick/asynctools/.

Each tool includes a tutorial, examples, and instructions on installation and set-up, but the tools are designed only to operate on Linux platforms.

Minimalist 2.0 is intended for the design of asynchronous burst-mode controllers and this version of the tool, with Verilog support, adds a multi-level optimizer package, improved graphical interfaces, auto-insertion of initialization circuitry, support for decomposition of specifications, and a top-to-bottom verifier.

ATN-Opt is a CAD package for the synthesis and optimization of asynchronous threshold networks. The package supports Verilog/VHDL/BLIF circuit formats, and the GENLIB technology library format. It allows the user to target various costs: delay, area, power.

The package can typically synthesize and optimize circuits of several thousand gates in several seconds, often with 30 to 50 percent improvement in area and delay over a direct-mapped implementation.

The discrete event system, analyzer is a performance analysis and timing verification tool for concurrent digital systems. The evaluation considers all extremes of behavior between a pair of events during the evolution of the system's behavior, from the initial state through 'ramp-up' phase to 'steady-state' behavior. This information provides bounds on minimum and maximum throughput, information on impossible orderings of events (useful for optimization), and other useful metrics.

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