Importance

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Abstract

Format-independent electronic circuit descriptions are generated by providing incompatible sets of naming conventions, providing translation rules for generating circuit element names which satisfy all supported naming conventions, and modifying element names in accordance with the translation rules. Supported circuit descriptions may represent netlists defined by high-level design languages such as Verilog, EDIF, VHDL, and so forth, or may represent schematics or other symbolic representations. Any element associated with any input circuit representation may be tested or modified to ensure compatibility, such as the naming of logic cell types and instances, the naming of nets interconnecting logic cells, and the naming of input, output, and bidirectional ports. In a preferred embodiment, an element name to be resolved is inserted into a set of element names to determine whether the name is unique. If not, the proposed name is modified according to a set of modification rules until uniqueness is achieved. The step of modifying a name may be carried out on an iterative basis, for example, by attaching an incremented or decremented index value to an element name as a prefix or suffix.

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First Claim