Simultaneous placement and routing (SPAR) method for integrated circuit physical design automation system
First Claim
1. A method of optimizing a cell placement for an integrated circuit chip, comprising the steps of:
- (a) routing said cell placement;
(b) identifying congested areas of said routing;
(c) selectively applying a congestion reduction algorithm only within said congested areas to alter said cell placement in said congested areas;
(d) computing a cell placement fitness; and
(e) if said cell placement fitness is below a predetermined value, repeating steps (b) to (d).
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Accused Products
Abstract
In a physical design automation system for producing an optimized cell placement for an integrated circuit chip, a placement optimization methodology is decomposed into a plurality of cell placement optimization processes that are performed simultaneously by parallel processors on input data representing the chip. The results of the optimization processes are recomposed to produce an optimized cell placement. The fitness of the optimized cell placement is analyzed, and the parallel processors are controlled to selectively repeat performing the optimization processes for further optimizing the optimized cell placement if the fitness does not satisfy a predetermined criterion. The system can be applied to initial placement, routing, placement improvement and other problems. The processors can perform the same optimization process on different placements, or on areas of a single placement. Alternatively, the processors can perform different optimization processes simultaneously on a single initial placement, with the resulting processed placement having the highest fitness being selected as the optimized placement. The processors can further selectively reprocess areas of a placement having high cell interconnect congestion or other low fitness parameters.
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Citations
28 Claims
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1. A method of optimizing a cell placement for an integrated circuit chip, comprising the steps of:
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(a) routing said cell placement; (b) identifying congested areas of said routing; (c) selectively applying a congestion reduction algorithm only within said congested areas to alter said cell placement in said congested areas; (d) computing a cell placement fitness; and (e) if said cell placement fitness is below a predetermined value, repeating steps (b) to (d). - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A physical design automation system for optimizing a cell placement for an integrated circuit chip, comprising:
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a router for routing said cell placement; and a computer for performing operations of; identifying congested areas of said routing; selectively applying a congestion reduction algorithm only within said congested areas to alter said cell placement in said congested areas; and computing a cell placement fitness; and a controller for controlling the computer to repeat performing said operations until said cell placement fitness attains a predetermined value. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28)
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Specification