Chapter 7
Designing Application-Specific
Architectures
The passive routing mechanism reviewed in Chap. 6 can be used in different architectures. An architecture defines how the used modules executing the operations
are connected and arranged. Thus far, simple architectures like rings and buses
have been considered [23, 79]. But these architectures are often unsuited for the
given experiments and suffer from large execution times (crucial for time-sensitive
experiments) or require complex droplet re-injections.
This chapter aims to overcome these obstacles by exploring the potential of
architectures which go beyond the currently considered architectures. To this
end, the consideration of application-specific architectures is proposed, which are
particularly suited for a given set of experiments to be realized. But designing an
application-specific architecture which allows to execute all experiments, considers
physical constraints, and is optimized for the designer’s needs is a complex
task. In order to handle this complexity and to generate these application-specific
architectures, this chapter introduces an automatic method (based on [48]), which
exploits the power of Satisfiability Modulo Theories solvers (SMT-solvers, [5]).
The proposed method automatically generates architectures that are optimized with
respect to various physical constraints and/or design objectives such as the number
of required modules, connections, and depth. Finally, an evaluation demonstrates
the performance of the proposed design method and the superiority of the resulting
application-specific architectures compared to the ring architecture.
The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows: The next section discusses existing architectures and their drawbacks. Afterwards, Sect. 7.2 motivates
application-specific architectures and introduces their notation. The considered
design task and the general idea to solve this task are described in Sect. 7.3. Next,
the symbolic formulation used for applying SMT-solvers is provided in Sect. 7.4.
Results of the evaluations and case studies are summarized in Sect. 7.5. Finally, the
chapter is concluded in Sect. 7.6.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
A. Grimmer, R. Wille, Designing Droplet Microfluidic Networks,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20713-7_7
83
Designing Application-Specific
Architectures
The passive routing mechanism reviewed in Chap. 6 can be used in different architectures. An architecture defines how the used modules executing the operations
are connected and arranged. Thus far, simple architectures like rings and buses
have been considered [23, 79]. But these architectures are often unsuited for the
given experiments and suffer from large execution times (crucial for time-sensitive
experiments) or require complex droplet re-injections.
This chapter aims to overcome these obstacles by exploring the potential of
architectures which go beyond the currently considered architectures. To this
end, the consideration of application-specific architectures is proposed, which are
particularly suited for a given set of experiments to be realized. But designing an
application-specific architecture which allows to execute all experiments, considers
physical constraints, and is optimized for the designer’s needs is a complex
task. In order to handle this complexity and to generate these application-specific
architectures, this chapter introduces an automatic method (based on [48]), which
exploits the power of Satisfiability Modulo Theories solvers (SMT-solvers, [5]).
The proposed method automatically generates architectures that are optimized with
respect to various physical constraints and/or design objectives such as the number
of required modules, connections, and depth. Finally, an evaluation demonstrates
the performance of the proposed design method and the superiority of the resulting
application-specific architectures compared to the ring architecture.
The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows: The next section discusses existing architectures and their drawbacks. Afterwards, Sect. 7.2 motivates
application-specific architectures and introduces their notation. The considered
design task and the general idea to solve this task are described in Sect. 7.3. Next,
the symbolic formulation used for applying SMT-solvers is provided in Sect. 7.4.
Results of the evaluations and case studies are summarized in Sect. 7.5. Finally, the
chapter is concluded in Sect. 7.6.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
A. Grimmer, R. Wille, Designing Droplet Microfluidic Networks,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20713-7_7
83