Abstract:
A system and method for enabling Intellectual Property (IP) Blocks to be reused at a system level. The present invention represents the IP blocks as blocks that exchange messages without needing to represent the functionality of the IP blocks. The implementations of these IP blocks exchanges messages through complex signaling protocols. In conventional systems, interfacing between IP blocks that use different signaling protocols is a tedious and error prone design task. The present invention uses regular expression based protocol descriptions to show how to map the message onto a signaling protocol. Given two protocols, the present invention builds an interface machine that automatically labels data referenced by all protocols. The present invention is capable of generating the interface even when the data sequencing of the two protocols differs.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     The present invention is related to the field of electronic design automation (EDA) and more particularly to the field of interface synthesis for intellectual property (IP) blocks. 
     2. Description of Background Art 
     As time to market pressures and product complexities climb, the pressure to reuse complex building blocks (also known as Intellectual Property, or IP) also increases. Today, most IP is available only at the register transfer level (RTL). This is problematic because of verification speeds and the variety of signaling conventions used for interfacing between IP blocks. 
     The present invention addresses the problem of synthesizing interfaces between communicating IPs that use different signaling conventions. For this problem, a description of the entire behavior of the IP is not only cumbersome, but introduces unnecessary details that may hamper the design process. An interface-based design process that attempts to separate the communication from the behavior for IP is described in J. A. Rowson and A. L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli,  Interface Based Design , Proceedings of the 34 th  Design Automaton Conference, 178–183 (Jun. 9–13, 1997) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. To separate the communication aspect of the IP blocks from their behavior, the blocks must be abstracted to a transaction or messaging level. With abstracted communication, improvement in simulation performance was shown with a simulator named Cheetah. However, the abstraction level that is appropriate for fast simulation is not efficient for implementation. 
     One problem is that given two communicating design actors exchanging data, e.g., IP blocks, and a description of the two protocols that each one of the IP blocks uses to transfer the data, an interface needs to be generated that ensures that data transfers are consistent between the two protocols. 
     Some conventional systems have attempted to address the problem of interface synthesis. One such conventional system is described in G. Borriello,  A New Interface Specification Methodology and its Applications to Transducer Synthesis , Ph.D. Thesis, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley Calif. (1988) and G. Borriello and R. H. Katz,  Synthesis and Optimization of Interface Transducer Logic , Proceeding of the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (November 1987), which are both incorporated by reference herein in their entirety (together referred to as “Borriello”. Borriello introduces an “event graph” to establish synchronization between the two protocols and data sequencing. One limitation of this approach is that before attempting to make the two protocols compatible, a user must manually assign labels to the data referenced by each protocol, because the specification of the protocols is given at a very low level of abstraction using waveforms. 
     A second conventional system is described in J. S. Sun and R. W. Brodersen,  Design of System Interface Modules , Proceeding of International Conference on Computer Aided Design, 478–481 (1992) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. This second system extends the Borriello approach by providing a library of components. Each component in the library must still be manually entered into the library. Accordingly, even in this second system the user must still consider lower level details. 
     A third approach is described in S. Narayan and D. D. Gajski,  Interfacing Incompatible Protocols Using Interface Process Generation , Proceedings of the 32 nd  Design Automation Conference, 448–473 (Jun. 12–16, 1995) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. In this approach the protocol specification is first reduced to the combination of five basic operations (data read, data write, control read, control write, and time delay). Then the protocol description is broken into blocks (called relations) whose execution is guarded by a condition on one of the control wires or by a time delay. Next, the relations of the two protocols are matched into sets that transfer the same amount of data. Although this approach is able to account for data width mismatch between the two modules, the procedural specification of the protocols makes it difficult to adapt different data sequencing. 
     Another conventional approach is described in J. Akella and K. McMillan,  Synthesizing Converters Between Finite State Protocols , Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Design, 410–413 (Oct. 14–15, 1991) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. In this approach the protocols are described as two finite state machines (FSMs), while a third FSM represents the valid transfer of data. The product machine is taken and pruned of the invalid/useless states. One limitation in this conventional approach is that data width mismatch cannot be handled and that the designer must manually enter the intended behavior of the interface in the form of the third FSM (referred to as the C-machine). 
     What is needed is a system and method that overcomes the above identified limitations and: (1) automatically resolves the correspondence between data referenced by multiple protocols; and (2) generates an interface that can translate between different sequences of data without having to manually introduce the intended behavior of the interface process. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     Referring to  FIG. 1A , the invention is a system and method for enabling Intellectual Property Blocks (IP) Blocks  10  and  20  to be reused at a system level. The present invention represents the IP blocks  10  and  20  as blocks that exchange messages without needing to represent the functionality of the IP blocks  10  and  20 . The implementations of these IP blocks  10  and  12  exchanges messages through complex signaling protocols  12  and  22 . In conventional systems, interfacing between IP blocks that use different signaling protocols is a tedious and error prone design task. The present invention uses regular expression based protocol descriptions to map the messages onto a signaling protocol. Given the two protocols  12  and  22 , the present invention uses an interface generator  118  and builds an interface machine  30  that automatically labels data reference by all protocols. The present invention is also capable of generating the interface  30  even when the data sequencing of the two protocols  12  and  22  differs. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1A  is an illustration of IP blocks having different signaling protocols and an interface generated for communication between IP blocks according to one embodiment; 
         FIG. 1B  is an illustration of a computer environment in which the preferred embodiment of the present invention may operate. 
         FIG. 2  is a flow chart describing the operation of the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 3  is a flow chart having a more detailed description of the process of generating finite automata according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 4  is an example of the finite automata created according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 5  is a listing of pseudo-code corresponding to a more detailed description of the process of product computation and the process of resolving non-determinism according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIGS. 6(   a )–( i ) are illustrations of an example of the product computation process according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIGS. 7(   a )–( i ) are illustrations of an example of the process of resolving non-determinism in the product computation process according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 8  is an illustration of a deterministic state machine generated according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     A preferred embodiment of the present invention is now described with reference to the figures where like reference numbers indicate identical or functionally similar elements. Also in the figures, the left most digit of each reference number corresponds to the figure in which the reference number is first used. 
       FIG. 1B  is an illustration of a computer system in which the preferred embodiment of the present invention resides and operates. The computer system includes a conventional computer  102 , such as a SPARC Station  10  that is commercially available from Sun Microsystems, Santa Clara, Calif. or an IBM compatible personal computer that is commercially available from IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., for example. The computer  102  includes a memory module  104 , a processor  106 , an optional network interface  108 , a storage device  110 , and an input/output (I/O) unit  112 . In addition, an input device  122  and a display unit  124  can be coupled to the computer. The memory module  104  can be conventional random access memory (RAM) and can include a conventional operating system  114 , a data module  116  for storing data and data structure generated by the present invention, and application programs  120 , including an interface generator  118  (in which the present invention is stored and executed from in the preferred embodiment) and other simulation programs can be stored. Although the preferred embodiment of the present invention is described with respect to a circuit synthesis tool in a computer aided design (CAD) or electronic design automation (EDA) environment, it will be apparent to persons skilled in the art that the system and method of the present invention can be utilized in many different environments or types of circuit syntheses tools and circuit simulators, e.g., timing simulators, mixed signal simulators, logic simulators, etc., without departing from the scope of the present invention. 
     The processor  106  can be a conventional microprocessor, e.g., a Pentium III processor that is commercially available from Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif. The optional network interface  108 , the storage device  110 , and the I/O unit are all conventional. The input device  122  can be a conventional keyboard that is commercially available from Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., and/or a mouse, for example, that is commercially available from Logitech Incorporated, Freemont, Calif. The display unit  124  can be a conventional display monitor that is commercially available from IBM Corporation. 
     For clarity, the following description of the present invention does not describe the invention at the electronic signal manipulation level of detail. However, it will be apparent to persons skilled in the art that the steps such as storing a value, for example, correspond to manipulating a signal representing the value and storing the signal in the data module  116  or the storage device  110 , for example. It will also be apparent to persons skilled in the art that the data module  116  and/or the application/simulation programs module  120  may be any type of memory or combinations thereof, for example, RAM and/or cache, can be stored in the directly in the data module  116  or can be stored in the storage device  110 , e.g., a hard disk drive or any computer readable medium, for example. 
       FIG. 2  is a flow chart describing the operation of the preferred embodiment of the present invention. As described above, the present invention generates an interface  30  between two protocols  12  and  22  of IP blocks  10  and  20 . The present invention receives  202  regular expressions representing the first and second protocols  12  and  22 . The following description is based upon generating an interface  30  between two protocols  12  and  22 . Additional interfaces can be generated between additional protocols by repeatedly performing the following processes, for example. After receiving  202  the regular expressions, the present invention generates  204  finite automata from the regular expressions representing each protocol  12  and  22 . Then the interface generator  118  determines  206  the permitted sequence of operations and resolves  208  all non-determinisms. Each of these steps is described in detail below. 
     As described above, the interface generator  118  receives  202  regular expressions representing each of the protocols. That is, the two protocols are described using regular expressions. One example of using regular expressions for describing hardware and for describing protocols is described in A. Seawright and F. Brewer,  Clairvoyant: A Synthesis System for Production - based Specification , IEEE Transactions of VLSI Systems, 2:172–185 (June 1994), which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. This reference provides one example of a grammar-based specification that can be used in the present invention. One example of the use of grammar-based specification for the synthesis of hardware for data communication protocols is disclosed in J. Oberg, A. Kumar, and A. Hemani,  Grammar - based Hardware Synthesis of Data Communication Protocols , Proceedings of the 9 th  International Symposium on System Synthesis, 14–19 (Nov. 6–8, 1996) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. In this reference the specific problem of interface synthesis is not addressed. 
     The use of derivatives of regular expressions is described in J. A. Brzozowski,  Derviatives of Regular Expressions , Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, 11(4):481–494 (October 1964), and C. N. Coelho and G. D. Micheli,  Analysis and Synthesis of Concurrent Digital Circuits Using Control - flow Expressions , IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 15(8):854–876 (August 1996) which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. 
     The present invention separates the communication aspect of the IP block and the behavioral aspect of the IP block. This single abstract model may represent many actual IP blocks that have different signaling conventions on their interfaces. The present invention synthesizes a machine to convert one protocol (convention) to another. 
     A protocol may be given regardless of its physical implementation. However, in order to simplify this description, the present invention presumes that the communication is point-to-point. That is, the communication media (the interface that will be synthesizes) is not shared with other modules in the system. The algorithm could however be used as a building block to a more general approach, as described above. The preferred embodiment of the present invention also presumes that the number of bits that are transmitted using a first protocol is the same as the number of bits that must be received using the second protocol. The present invention does not require that the sequence in which the bits are transmitted be the same as the sequence that the bits be received. In the preferred embodiment, the present invention temporarily stores part of the data in a conventional internal register. The internal register is long enough to store the entire data type. However, smaller or bigger registers can be used if a proper dataflow analysis shows that its size is big enough to hold all the data in transit. Alternatively, the interface may be implemented in software and the data may be stored in the memory module  104  or the storage device  110 , for example. 
     One output of the present invention is a finite state machine and a data path that includes the internal register. 
     As described above, the input to the present invention is a description of the protocol used by the two modules using regular expressions. One description of how the protocols are represented by regular expressions is now set forth. In one embodiment of the present invention each module has a set of ports (data and control) over which the transfer occurs. One definition of a protocol is the legal sequences of values that may appear on the ports from the onset to the end of the data transfer. 
     If the ports are ordered in an arbitrary way, a symbol in the protocol can represent a tuple composed of the values on the ports listed in their order. In order to simplify the specification, ports that represent buses can be bundled together and assigned a single numerical value. Under this assumption, a protocol is a set of strings of symbols, or, in other words, a language in the alphabet of all the values that a symbol may assume. The present invention describes such a language with regular expressions—this way regular protocols may be used and a one to one correspondence can be established with finite state machines. 
     As mentioned above, symbols take values over the set of all possible tuples of values of the ports. If all the values that the data can take are included in the alphabet, then even very simple protocols would be expressed with exponentially growing regular expressions. For example, if a block has a connection to its environment with eight (8) wires transmitting a byte, then the protocol would be the set of all possible values over 8 wires, namely 256 different strings of 1 symbol. Since the interface generated by the present invention is independent of the value that the data takes, and is related to the control flow of the protocol, the present invention introduces a new symbol to the alphabet in the regular expression meaning any value. However, this by itself is not enough because in case of protocols where data is sequenced over a certain set of wires, e.g., a serial line, the interface must know what part of the data type is currently being transferred. Therefore the present invention also introduces a symbol meaning: any value the data type takes on a certain subset of its string of bits. For simplicity in parsing, the present invention only permits the specification of such a reference over intervals (possibly a single bit) on the string of bits representing the data type. For example, if a data type D is composed of 20 bits, the syntax D[10:5] is a reference to the value of the data type from bit  5  to bit  10 . The occurrence of a reference in the protocol causes the interface to either store the value in the internal register or output the value previously stored in the internal register at the specified location. 
     In the preferred embodiment, information is represented as a text file. To ease the protocol specification, a token can be thought of as a typical composite data type, e.g., an array or a record structure composing other types. A wide variety of data types can be derived using this mechanism from some basic data type. In the preferred embodiment the basic data type consists of one bit of information, but other basic data types might be used. In the specification, the single parts of the token can be referenced using the name of the fields of its data type. 
     In the preferred embodiment the ports are listed with their direction and their data type. Since a protocol is independent of the direction of the transfer of data, the direction of the port is specified as either master or slave, the actual direction being resolved when the synthesis of the interface is requested. This ensures that an input device and an output device that use the same protocol share the same description. 
     Regular expressions can be expressed hierarchically using a regular Grammar as described in A. V. Aho, R. Sethi, and J. D. Ullman,  Compilers Principles, Techniques and Tools , Addison-Wesley (1988) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. In addition to its name, each rule of the grammar has a list of parameters whose value can be specified by the parent expression. In each rule, the references to values (as in D[10:5]) can be expressed in terms of the rules parameters which act as local variables. For the top level rule of the grammar, the only parameter is the token to be transferred so that, ultimately, all references are made with respect to the token in the preferred embodiment. 
     In a preferred embodiment, a symbol in the alphabet of the regular expression can be represented as a comma-separated list of values and references enclosed in braces, as in {0, 4, D[10:5]} for a 3 port specification. The number of values and their type match that of the port list for all rules, regardless of their level in the hierarchy of the specification. 
     Symbols and regular expressions can be composed using any combination of the standard operators, including “*” for Kleene closure (0 or more of the referenced symbol), “+” for semi-closure (1 or more), “|” for choice and a comma (“,”) for sequential expressions. In one embodiment, recursion is not used, except in the form of tail recursion when the Kleene closure operator is used. 
     Table 1 sets forth two examples illustrating how the token “yow” can be mapped to two different protocols. 
     
       
         
               
               
             
           
               
                   
                 TABLE 1 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
             
               
                   
                 type byte bit[7:0]; 
               
               
                   
                 type yow { byte a; byte b; } 
               
               
                   
                 protocol handshk of type yow { 
               
               
                   
                  master bit trigger, byte bus 
               
               
                   
                  term wait(bit t) { t, − } 
               
               
                   
                  term get(bit t, byte b) { t, b } 
               
               
                   
                  handshk(yow y) { wait(0)*,get(1,y.a)+,get(0,y.b)+ } 
               
               
                   
                 } 
               
               
                   
                 protocol serial of type yow { 
               
               
                   
                  master bit start, byte bus; 
               
               
                   
                  term null( ) { 0, − } 
               
               
                   
                  term one(byte b) { 1, b } 
               
               
                   
                  term two(byte b) { 0, b } 
               
               
                   
                  serial(yow y) { null( )*,one(y.a),two(y.b)+ } 
               
               
                   
                 } 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
          
         
       
     
     This second section of input code in table 1 defines a protocol “serial” for type “yow.” The interface is defined as having two ports that can be used within the protocol, a pin named “start” and byte-wide bus named “bus.” Both of these ports are driven by the master side of the interface. There are three sub-rules defined in the grammar: null, one, and two. Each of these patterns provides a value for all the ports, with “don&#39;t care” being represented by a dash (“-”). Parameters are listed with their data type after the name of the rule. The top level rule is a regular expression composition of calls to the terminal rules. In this case, null is expected 0 or more times (a Kleene closure), followed sequentially by a one with the a field of the yow token, followed by a two with the b field. As mentioned earlier, rules can be nested hierarchically so that serial could be used as a building block for more complex protocols. In this example the serial protocol waits for a value of one on the start pin with an associated byte on bus, followed immediately by a zero on the start pin and the other byte on bus. 
     The first section of input code in table 1 defines protocol “handshk” for type yow. Here, the protocol starts with trigger having a value of zero. Byte “a” is transferred when trigger transitions to a value of “1” and byte “b” is transferred when trigger transitions back to a value of zero. One difference with the previous protocol is that in “handshk” the time spent on the first byte is not known because the state where byte “a” is transferred can be traversed 1 or more times; on the other hand, for the “serial” protocol the time spent is specified as a single traversal of the corresponding state. In the first example the pin “start” identifies the start of the transfer, in the second example the change of value in “trigger” identifies the timing of the transfer of both the first and second bytes. 
     A result of this step of the present invention includes regular expressions representing the first and second protocols, e.g., handshk and serial. These regular expressions are received  202  by the interface generator  118  as described above. 
     As set forth earlier a goal of the present invention is to obtain a finite state machine (FSM) that when placed between the two modules implementing the specified protocols makes communication between the two modules (and protocols) possible. One problem is recognizing a given regular language on the producer side and generating a proper string contained in the other regular language on the other side. One problem with conventional systems is maintaining the same “meaning” (i.e. preserving the data contents of the message) while trying to optimize some parameters, e.g., transfer latency and the size of the storage in the interface process. 
     After receiving  202  the regular expressions, the present invention translates  204  the regular expressions into two automata that recognize the corresponding regular language. These two automata form the bulk of the interface. Then the product of the two automata is taken so that only the legal sequence of operations is retained  206 , the signals are translated into inputs and outputs, and the non-determinism that arises is resolved  208  following one or more of the following rules: (1) never output a piece of data that has not yet been received; (2) complete the transfer of the data and reach the end of the transaction; (3) minimize (optimize) the latency. 
     Any remaining non determinism is broken using arbitrary choices based on the order the states are generated. In alternate embodiments other rules can be used to resolve non-determinisms. These procedures are now described in detail. 
       FIG. 3  is a flow chart having a more detailed description of the process of generating  204  finite automata according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
     To generate or translate the received regular expressions into finite automata the present invention modifies an approach using derivatives of regular expressions (as set forth in Brzozowski et al., referenced above). In contrast, other conventional systems teach the use of a different algorithm to build a non-deterministic automaton and then use the subsets construction to obtain the deterministic version. See, for example, J. E. Hopcroft and J. D. Ullman,  Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation , Addison-Wesley (1986), which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. 
     An advantage of the derivative approach used by the present invention is that at each step we know how far we are in the protocol transaction, since, in contrast to conventional systems, the present invention begins constructing the automaton from the initial state  302  rather than from some unspecified internal state. The present invention uses this feature to characterize each state with the amount of data that has been transferred along the ports. That is, the present invention extracts and identifies  304  sequences of data. This is done by collecting the information on the data that is transferred as transitions are added during the automaton construction. For each transition this information is integrated with that of previous transitions so that each state is provided with a history of the data that was previously transferred. This information is used during the construction of the product machine in step  206 . 
     The present invention then constructs  306  derivatives based upon the regular expressions, as described below. The present invention then eliminates  308  equivalent expressions. As pointed out in Brzozowski et al., a challenge in computing derivatives is recognizing whether two regular expressions (two derivatives) represent the same language, even though they are expressed in different forms. In order to do that, the present invention represents the derivative of the regular expression with respect to a certain string as the set of symbols in the regular expression itself that may follow the given string. This can be obtained by first constructing a parse tree for the regular expression (where internal nodes represent operators and leaves represent symbols) and then traversing the tree beginning from the last symbol of the string that is being derived. Internal nodes may cause a different traversal depending on their nature. The following summarizes the different behaviors of the nodes: 
     Sequential operator: if traversing from the top of the tree, continue with the first child; if traversing from the first child continue with the second child; if traversing from the second child, continue towards the top. 
     Choice operator: if traversing from the top, continue by traversing both children; if traversing from either child, continue towards the top. 
     Kleene closure operator: always continue by traversing both the child and towards the top. 
     Semi-closure operator: if traversing from the top, continue with the child; if traversing from the child, continue by traversing both the child and the top. 
     In our representation, the check for equivalence is reduced to a check of equality between sets, since two identical sets of symbols represent the same derivative. However, the converse is not true (the same derivative could be represented by different sets), so that the complexity of the algorithm in the worst case scenario is exponentially related to the number of symbols in the regular expression (the same as the subsets construction), and the finite automaton that is obtained may not be minimum. However, in experiments for most practical cases, the state explosion has not been observed. Because of the way derivatives are represented, the present invention can factor any common term found at the beginning of the different branches of a choice operator, or detect the reconvergence after the choice was taken, thus following the style that many designers naturally employ when specifying a protocol. More details can be found in R. Passerone,  Automatic Synthesis of Interfaces Between Incompatible Protocols , M. S. Thesis, University of California at Berkeley, (December 1997)(received by the University of California at Berkeley library on Jun. 22, 1998 and thereafter cataloged) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. 
     While the finite automaton is constructed, the references to the fields of the data type of the token are expanded into references to the token in terms of the basic data type by following the hierarchy of the data type definition. Since this procedure is done for both protocols, a common factoring is established and the exact correspondence between parts of the token is resolved, even if the data types of the two protocols are structurally different. 
       FIG. 4  is an example of the finite automata generated  204  by the present invention representing the two above protocols. 
     After generating  204  the finite automata, the interface generator  118  of the present invention determines  206  the permitted sequence of operations of the two protocols and resolves  208  all non-determinisms. The two generated  204  deterministic finite automata recognize a transaction on either side of the interface. The present invention then proceeds with the construction  206  of a subset of the product machine that performs the correct transfer of data. Moreover, the input/output nature of the signals is taken into account, so that a finite automation with output actions is created. 
     Another issue addressed by the present invention is non determinism. The present invention begins with two deterministic finite automata, so that the product is still a deterministic finite automaton. However, when signals are partitioned into inputs and outputs and a finite state machine is built, only the input set contributes to the condition on each arc, and therefore non determinism may arise (these machines are known as pseudo non deterministic, in that their corresponding finite automaton is deterministic). 
     If all possible pairs of states were included in the product machine, then the output side of the interface would be able to output data that in fact the input side had not yet received. This means that the product machine contains states that are not causally legal, and therefore should not be included. At the same time, there could be states that are perfectly legal, but that always lead to an illegal state—those too should not be included in the final machine. As a consequence, it may happen that the output of some piece of data must be delayed for many state transitions even though the data is already available in the registers of the interface. This effect can be explained considering that the interface is able to take decisions only in those states that contain some non deterministic transitions so that some condition can be added depending on the status of the transfer on the other side of the interface. These conditions can be automatically generated in the product machine by removing the illegal states and the corresponding transitions leading to them. Following a naming convention introduced in D. Filo, D. C. Ku, C. N. Coelho and G. De Micheli,  Interface Optimization for Concurrent Systems Under Timing Constraints,  1 IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, 172–185 (September 1993), which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, states having non deterministic transitions are referred to as “anchor points.” 
     Two approaches to construct the required subset of the product machine are: (1) start from nothing and add states, or (2) start from the entire product machine and remove the unwanted states. The preferred embodiment of the present invention follows the first approach although the second approach could be used in an alternate embodiment, and can be used with implicit enumeration techniques. The algorithm systematically explores all paths going from the initial state to the final states, removing those that are not permissible. Presently the exploration is done by explicitly enumerating the states, but implicit enumeration techniques can be used. Considering the way the present invention resolves non determinism, the product computation algorithm of the present invention always finds the correct interface between two protocols, if one exists. In addition, it always returns the minimum latency interface. A more formal proof of this feature is found in the R. Passerone thesis, referenced above. 
     The present invention uses a depth first recursive search implemented by a procedure called explore.  FIG. 5  is a listing of pseudo-code corresponding to a more detailed description of the process of product computation and the process of resolving non-determinism, i.e., the “explore” process, according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. The process is started by the creation of the initial pair of states and a call to its explore function. Three data structures are used to support the computation: a stack records all the states that have been visited along the path to the current state, used to detect loops in the product machine; a pool records all the states that were found to be illegal either because of data inconsistency or because they lead to data inconsistency (this data structure acts like a cache that prevents the algorithm from re-exploring paths that are already known to be inconsistent); states that are themselves legal but do not lead to a successful transaction, e.g., they only lead to a loop or deadlock condition, are also recorded here; an FSM is used to collect all the states that will eventually be part of the product machine. 
     The stack can be used to avoid endless computation. The present invention wants to explore all paths in the product machine, but does not want to loop through the inevitable cycles that are found in the state transition diagram. Re-exploring a loop does not provide any more information relating to the states in the loop so the present invention stops exploration of such states when they are detected. 
     For each pair of states, i.e. a state in the product machine, a pair of bitsets is used to record the amount of data that has been received and that has been sent, or has to be sent. These values are updated each time a transition is taken between two pairs of states, and is used to check the data consistency. 
     The explore function returns an object to the caller which may assume different symbolic values: “Success” means that the state will certainly lead to a successful transfer of the data and a companion number indicates the minimum number of transitions that it takes to get to the end of the transaction; “Fail” means that the state is either illegal or leads to an illegal state; “ImmediateLoop” indicates that the state has already been explored whereas “FutureLoop” that the state leads to a loop in one of its future transitions; “LoopSuccess” is returned when the state may either lead to a loop or to a successful transfer of the data (depending on the behavior of the outside environment). 
     In order to compute the return value, the explore operation of the present invention starts by checking on the stack or on the currently computed automaton if the state was already explored and returns with a loop indication to avoid multiple computations. Also the transition is retargeted to the state that was found. A return with a fail indication is also obtained in case the state is found to be inconsistent. In all other cases the state is pushed on the stack and for each pair of outgoing transitions the new state is created and explored (after updating the data consistency bitsets). The return value of each exploration is stored and the state is popped from the stack. At this point the transitions are analyzed and the non-determinism for the state is resolved. The final result is computed using the exploration result from all the transitions that survived the determinization. Since now all transitions are deterministic, a Fail in any of them will make explore return a Fail to the calling function even though other transitions from the same state lead to a successful transaction. This is because the process has no control over the transition that is taken once the state is reached. Therefore in order to ensure accuracy this state should not be reached. If there is no Fail, then either Success or LoopSuccess is returned with a number of state transitions equal to the minimum over all transitions plus 1 (to account for the present state). 
     Before returning, and if successful, the state is recorded in the FSM data structure along with its transitions. If unsuccessful, it is inserted in the failing pool. 
     A simple example will help illustrate the construction of the product machine. Consider the two protocols described above (“handshk” and “serial”).  FIGS. 6(   a )–( i ) are illustrations of an example of the product computation process according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
     In this example data is transferred from the handshk to the serial protocol. The product machine construction starts from the state corresponding to the pair of initial states ( FIG. 6   a ) where the current state corresponds to the handshk-serial state pair identified by the darkened circles. Following that, all possible transitions are explored to see which ones should be included in the product. 
     From the initial state ( FIG. 6   a ) the set of all possible transitions includes a loop to the initial state itself (when the inputs are 0,-/0,-; where the first set of inputs corresponds to the inputs to the handshake protocol and the second set of inputs represents the inputs to the serial protocol, and where “-” represents a don&#39;t care input) or a transition to a pair of states where either one of the two automata has advanced one position. If the inputs are (0,-/1,a) state (a) would transition to state (b) ( FIG. 6   b ). State (b) is represented by a dashed line because it is a forbidden state. It is a forbidden state because the handshake protocol attempts to output data (byte “a”), but this byte has not yet been received by the handshake protocol. State (b) is therefore not included in the product machine and no additional exploration of state (b) is necessary. 
     If the inputs are (1,a/0,-) state (a) would transition to state (c) ( FIG. 6   c ). State (c) is a permissible state since the first byte (“a”) is received by the handshake protocol and nothing is output to the serial protocol. 
     State (d) ( FIG. 6   d ) is transitioned to if while at state (c) the inputs (1,a/1,a) are received, or if while at state (a) the inputs (1,a/1,a) are received. State (d) is a permissible state because the data (“a”) is received by the handshake protocol and is sent to the serial protocol. If, while in state (d), the inputs are (0,b/0,b) a transition to state (g) would occur ( FIG. 6   g ). State (g) is a permissible state because the data (“b”) is received by the handshake protocol and is sent to the serial protocol. If, while in state (d), the inputs are (1,a/0,b) a transition to state (f) would occur ( FIG. 6   f ). State (f) is represented by a dashed line because it is also a forbidden state. It is a forbidden state because the handshake protocol attempts to output data (byte “b”), but this byte has not yet been received by the handshake protocol. State (f) is therefore not included in the product machine and no additional exploration of state (f) is necessary. The present invention then looks at the possible child states of state (d), i.e., state (g) and state (f). State (f) is a forbidden state, and since the data values received while at state (d) are not known beforehand and are controlled solely by the producer of the data, it is possible to transition from (d) to (f) (it occurs if the handshake protocol does not transmit byte “b” immediately after the interface reaches state (d)). Since this must be avoided in all cases to ensure the correct operation, the present invention identifies state (d) as being an illegal state. In  FIG. 7 , the dashed lines indicate that state (d) is identified as a forbidden state. State (d) could be saved in the construction only if a legal transition existed outgoing from (d) and with the same input label as the illegal transition, as that would be chosen during the process of resolving non-determinism, as will be described later. 
     State (e) ( FIG. 6   e ) is transitioned to if while at state (c) the inputs (0,b/0,-) are received. State (e) is a permissible state because the data (“b”) is received by the handshake protocol and nothing is sent to the serial protocol. State (h) ( FIG. 6   h ) is transitioned to if while at state (c) the inputs (0,b/1,a) are received or if while at state (e), the inputs (0,b/1,a) are received. State (h) is a permissible state because the data (“a” and “b”) has been received by the handshake protocol and byte “a” is sent to the serial protocol. 
     State (i) ( FIG. 6   i ) is transitioned to if while at state (h) the inputs (0,b/0,b) are received. State (i) is a permissible state because the data (“b”) has been received by the handshake protocol and is sent to the serial protocol. The resulting set of all permitted sequences includes state (a), state (c), state (d), state (e), state (g), state (h), and state (i). 
     While determining  206  all permitted sequences of operations using the above described product computation method, the present invention resolves  208  all non-determinisms. The present invention partitions the set of outgoing transitions into equivalence classes: each class is denoted by the same input label (e.g., the non deterministic transitions are grouped together). For each equivalence class, only one transition is chosen to be part of the final implementation. Here is where choices can be taken to resolve non determinism and to optimize performance. In the preferred embodiment, a transition whose exploration returned a Success or LoopSuccess is chosen over a Loop or a Fail. Ties between successful transitions are broken considering the number of state transitions that must be taken to reach the end of the transaction. 
       FIGS. 7(   a )–( i ) are illustrations of an example of the process of resolving non-determinism in the product computation process according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. When at state (a), a non-determinism does not exist when an input of (0,-) is received by the handshake protocol because the state machine stays at state (a) since state (b) has already been eliminated. However, if the handshake protocol receives an input of (1,a) at state (a) then the state machine can proceed to either state (c) or state (d). Since state (d) was already found to be illegal, only the transition to (c) is retained in the final construction. 
     Similarly, when a (0,b) is received by the handshake protocol while at state (c) a non-determinism exists because the state machine can transition to either state (e) or state (h). Since a stated objective is to minimize the latency of the system, state (e) is eliminated because it is an intermediate state to state (h). 
     When the last explore returns the FSM contains the product machine. Since states are added to the FSM starting from the last state (because of the recursive call), we may add states that are unreachable from the start state. A final clean up procedure takes care of removing all dangling states, e.g., state (g). 
       FIG. 8  is an illustration of a deterministic state machine generated according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention. The remaining states are state (a), state (c), state (h) and state (i). The resulting state machine is deterministic since at each state an input to the handshake protocol has only one possible transition. 
     Besides the generation of the interface, the present invention can also generate two modules that act as the producer and as the receiver of the data, respectively. To do this, the finite automata generated for each protocol in the above procedure are transformed into FSM&#39;s by separating the input ports from the output ports. As for the product machine, this may result in some non-determinism, which, in the preferred embodiment, is randomly resolved by choosing one of the many possible transitions that share the same input. The data values for the token are finally assigned at random. In alternate embodiments other rules can be used to resolve non-determinisms and to assign the values to the token. These machines are very valuable in order to verify in a test-bench that the functionality of the interface is correct by abstracting the behavior of the modules whose protocol had been described. 
     While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment and several alternate embodiments, it will be understood by persons skilled in the relevant art that various changes in form and details can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.