ABSTRACT
As the complexity of VLSI systems continues to increase, the microelectronic industry must possess an ability to reconfigure design and manufacturing resources and integrate design activities so that it can quickly adapt to the market changes and new technology. This chapter presents a collaborative engineering framework that coordinates distributed design activities through the Internet. The crux of the framework is the formal representation of process flow using the process grammar, which provides the theoretical foundation for representation, abstraction, manipulation, and execution of design processes. The chapter reviews the functional requirements of the process management in VLSI system design and presents the Internet-based Microelectronic Design Automation System. The chapter also presents a detailed description and discussion of auto-mode scheduling, including the implementation of the linear scheduler.
