Handbook of Algorithms for Physical Design Automation
12 Nov 2008-
TL;DR: Handbook of Algorithms for Physical Design Automation provides a detailed overview of VLSI physical design automation, emphasizing state-of-the-art techniques, trends and improvements that have emerged during the previous decade.
Abstract: The physical design flow of any project depends upon the size of the design, the technology, the number of designers, the clock frequency, and the time to do the design. As technology advances and design-styles change, physical design flows are constantly reinvented as traditional phases are removed and new ones are added to accommodate changes in technology. Includes a personal perspective from Ralph Otten as he looks back on the major technical milestones in the history of physical design automation. Explore State-of-the-Art Techniques and TrendsHandbook of Algorithms for Physical Design Automation provides a detailed overview of VLSI physical design automation, emphasizing state-of-the-art techniques, trends and improvements that have emerged during the previous decade. After a brief introduction to the modern physical design problem, basic algorithmic techniques, and partitioning, the book discusses significant advances in floorplanning representations and describes recent formulations of the floorplanning problem. The text also addresses issues of placement, net layout and optimization, routing multiple signal nets, manufacturability, physical synthesis, special nets, and designing for specialized technologies. Highly-Focused Information for Next Generation Design Problems Although several books on this topic are currently available, most are either too broad or out of date. Alternatively, proceedings and journal articles are valuable resources for researchers in this area, but the material is widely dispersed in the literature. This handbook pulls together a broad variety of perspectives on the most challenging problems in the field, and focuses on emerging problems and research results.
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07 Nov 2011
TL;DR: Lookahead routing is developed to give the placer advance, firsthand knowledge of trouble spots, not distorted by crude congestion models, and global placement is extended to spread cells apart in congested areas, and move cells together in less-congested areas to ensure short, routable interconnects and moderate runtime.
Abstract: Highly-optimized placements may lead to irreparable routing congestion due to inadequate models of modern interconnect stacks and the impact of partial routing obstacles. Additional challenges in routability-driven placement include scalability to large netlists and limiting the complexity of software integration. Addressing these challenges, we develop lookahead routing to give the placer advance, firsthand knowledge of trouble spots, not distorted by crude congestion models. We also extend global placement to (i) spread cells apart in congested areas, and (ii) move cells together in less-congested areas to ensure short, routable interconnects and moderate runtime. While previous work adds isolated steps to global placement, our SIMultaneous PLace-and-Route tool SimPLR integrates a layer- and via-aware global router into a leading-edge, force-directed placer. The complexity of integration is mitigated by careful design of simple yet effective optimizations. On the ISPD 2011 Contest Benchmark Suite, with the official evaluation protocol, SimPLR outperforms every contestant on every benchmark.
91 citations
05 Nov 2012
TL;DR: The history of placement research, the progress leading up to the state of the art, and outstanding challenges are surveyed.
Abstract: Given the significance of placement in IC physical design, extensive research studies performed over the last 50 years addressed numerous aspects of global and detailed placement. The objectives and the constraints dominant in placement have been revised many times over, and continue to evolve. Additionally, the increasing scale of placement instances affects the algorithms of choice for high-performance tools. We survey the history of placement research, the progress achieved up to now, and outstanding challenges.
88 citations
TL;DR: The automatic layout generation is demonstrated here using the LAYGEN II tool for typical analog circuit structures, and the results in GDSII format were validated using the industrial grade verification tool Calibre®.
Abstract: This paper describes an innovative design automation tool, LAYGEN II, for analog integrated circuit (IC) layout generation based on template descriptions and on evolutionary computation techniques. LAYGEN II was developed giving special emphasis to the reusability of expert knowledge and to the efficiency of retargeting operations. The designer specifies the sized circuit-level structure, the required technology and also, the layout template consisting of technology and specification independent high-level layout guidelines. For placement, the topological relations present in the template are extracted to a nonslicing B*-tree layout representation, and the tool automatically merges devices and improves the floorplan quality. For routing an optimization kernel consisting of a tailored version of the multiobjective multiconstraint evolutionary algorithm NSGA-II is used. The Router optimizes all nets simultaneously and uses a built-in engine to evaluate each of the layout solutions. The automatic layout generation is demonstrated here using the LAYGEN II tool for typical analog circuit structures, and the results in GDSII format were validated using the industrial grade verification tool Calibre®.
84 citations
09 Oct 2011
TL;DR: An overview of DMFBs is provided and emerging CAD tools for the automated synthesis and optimization ofDMFB designs are described, from fluidic-level synthesis and chip-level design to testing.
Abstract: Microfluidic biochips are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers, and are able to integrate on-chip all the basic functions for biochemical analysis. The “digital” microfluidic biochips (DM-FBs) are manipulating liquids not as a continuous flow, but as discrete droplets on a two-dimensional array of electrodes. Basic mi-crofluidic operations, such as mixing and dilution, are performed on the array, by routing the corresponding droplets on a series of electrodes. The challenges facing biochips are similar to those faced by microelectronics some decades ago. To meet the challenges of increasing design complexity, computer-aided-design (CAD) tools are being developed for DMFBs. This paper provides an overview of DMFBs and describes emerging CAD tools for the automated synthesis and optimization of DMFB designs, from fluidic-level synthesis and chip-level design to testing. Design automations are expected to alleviate the burden of manual optimization of bioassays, time-consuming chip designs, and costly testing and maintenance procedures. With the assistance of CAD tools, users can concentrate on the development and abstraction of nanoscale bioassays while leaving chip optimization and implementation details to CAD tools.
67 citations
Cites background from "Handbook of Algorithms for Physical..."
...the component (defined as the 2D pin array) boundary the routing problem that connects these inside terminal pins to outsides signal ports is similar to the typical escape routing problem appearing in many VLSI designs [5]....
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IBM1
TL;DR: This work overviews the complexities with modeling congestion during physical synthesis and discusses how optimizations may be able to provide some relief.
Abstract: Traditionally, the goal of physical synthesis has been to produce a physical realization of the input netlist that meets its timing constraints with minimum area However, design routability has emerged from a secondary objective to perhaps the primary objective, in no small part due to the myriad of rules and constraints that emerge with each successive technology This work overviews the complexities with modeling congestion during physical synthesis and discusses how optimizations may be able to provide some relief
65 citations
Cites background from "Handbook of Algorithms for Physical..."
...Furthermore, some metrics (even those popular in the literature) tend to be less useful in practice than others, and all are sensitive to modeling approximations that exist between global and detailed routing [2]....
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