PAM-Blox: High Performance FPGA Design for Adaptive Computing
[appeared at IEEE Symposium on FPGAs for 
			Custom Computing Machines, Napa Valley, 1998]
by Oskar Mencer, Martin Morf, Michael J. Flynn

abstract. 
PAM-Blox is an object-oriented circuit generation environment on top of the
PCI Pamette design environment, PamDC. High-performance FPGA design for 
adaptive computing is simplified by using a hierarchy of optimized hardware 
objects described in C++. 

PAM-Blox consist of two major layers of abstraction. First, PamBlox are 
parameterizable simple elements such as counters and adders. Automatic 
placement of carry chains and flexible shapes are supported. PaModules 
are more complex elements possibly instantiating PamBlox. PaModules have 
fixed shapes and are usually optimized for a specific data-width. Examples 
for PaModules are multipliers, Coordinate Rotations (CORDICs), and special 
arithmetic units for encryption.

The key difference of our approach to most other design tools for FPGAs is 
that the designer has total control over placement at each level of the 
design hierarchy, which is the key to high-performance FPGA design. Second, 
the object interface was chosen carefully to encourage code-reuse and 
simplify code-sharing between designers.

PAM-Blox is intended to be part of an open library that allows design sharing 
between members of the adaptive computing community.