Minerva is the design process manager in
Odyssey, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Minerva as the design process manager in Odyssey.
The designer interacts with the Minerva User Interface to define and solve design problems. The designer only has to deal with the creative aspects of design, being able to explore different alternatives in the solution of these problems. Minerva works in the so-called problem-solving cycle. With Minerva, the designer formulates a problem, and then Minerva can help by providing information about ways to solve it (tools to be used and order to be followed, for example). The designer can then choose to execute one or several of these approaches. When the execution finishes, the designer may reject the result, in which case he/she can backtrack to any previous design state. In any case, another design problem may be selected right after that, which restarts the cycle.
Minerva can also manage complex design constraints relating multiple domains within a large design team. This is achieved through an automated and fully configurable methodology for constraint generation, propagation, and violation notification.
Example
Consider the team-based design of a MEMS system including pressure microsensors and analog circuitry. Examples of top-level constraints such a system must meet are timing, yield, resolution, dynamic range, and cost. Below we show a snapshot of the Minerva II design problem status window at a point in the design process. Designers may search for areas of the design that are likely to require redesign by examining the right most column (Conflicts),which shows the number of conflicts affecting the properties associated with each design problem. Specific types of conflicts can be viewed, e.g., only timing constraints (see lower right button). In the snapshot below the dev. Structure problem (selected row in white pane), for example, has 5 constraint violations.
For more information, see the constraint management section.
Contact: Juan-Antonio Carballo (jantonio@umich.edu)
Copyright © The University of Michigan and Carnegie
Mellon University 1999