RATIONALE

"Rutgers, REDESIGN"

L. I. Steinberg & T. M. Mitchell, A Knowledge Based Approach to VLSI
CAD: The REDESIGN System. Proc. 21st Design Automation Conference,
IEEE, 1984, pp. 412-418.  


This early system tackles a tough problem: how to redesign a circuit
given a small change in requirements.  It works with a design history
of the existing circuit, a lot of knowledge about components, and a
powerful tool that can reason about and simulate circuit behaviour.
This allows the places that need changing to be detected, so that
design knowledge can be applied to make the changes.

It is the first in a chain of papers describing seminal AI in D work
at Rutgers.  Change propagation in any form is a tough problem for
design, as a small change might lead to other changes, and in the
worst case, a total redesign.  This paper also introduces the concept
of a Design History, as well as the use of qualitative simulation to
check and to predict.  Design History reflects the decomposition of
the design problem.