electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

, the Interface Logic Model (ILM) is a technique to model blocks in hierarchal

VLSI Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...

implementation flow. It is a gate level

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

of a physical block where only the connections from the inputs to the first stage of flip-flops, and the connections from the last stage of

flip-flops Flip-flops are a type of light sandal, typically worn as a form of casual footwear. They consist of a flat sole held loosely on the foot by a Y-shaped strap known as a toe thong that passes between the first and second toes and around both side ...

to the outputs are in the model, including the flip-flops and the

clock tree In electronics and especially synchronous digital circuits, a clock signal (historically also known as ''logic beat'') oscillates between a high and a low state and is used like a metronome to coordinate actions of digital circuits. A clock sign ...

driving these flip-flops. All other internal flip-flop to flip-flop paths are stripped out of the ILM. The advantage of ILM is that the entire path (clock to clock path) is visible at top level for

interface Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Int ...

nets, unlike traditional block-based hierarchal implementation flow. This gives better accuracy in analysis for interface nets at negligible additional

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

and runtime overhead.

References

External links

Introduction to Physical Compiler and ILM Flow
{{Portal bar, Electronics Integrated circuits Conceptual models