Method and apparatus for applying fine-grained transforms during placement synthesis interaction

• US 7,047,163 B1
• Filed: 03/13/2000
• Issued: 05/16/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/13/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Sullivan, Andrew James, Reddy, Lakshmi Narasimha, Kudva, Prabhakar Nandavar, Stok, Leon, Chakraborty, Kanad, Villarrubia, Paul Gerard, Donath, Wilm Ernst
• Primary Examiner(s): Rodriguez, Paul L.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Craig, Dwin M.
• Application Number:
  US09/524,408
• Time in Patent Office: 2,255 Days
• Field of Search: 703/2, 703/13, 716/7, 716/8, 716/12, 716/13, 716/14
• US Class Current: 703/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/30 Circuit design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/392 Floor-planning or layout, e.g. partitioning or placement

Abstract

A method (and system) of applying transforms for modifying a plurality of domains concurrently in a design space, includes creating a sequence of more and less granular placement and netlist modification transforms. A converging design process flow is created by a flexible mechanism in which a select combination of fine-grained transforms are applied to optimize the netlist and placement of a design.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of applying fine-grained transformations during placement synthesis interaction, said method comprising:

creating and updating of bins;

applying the transforms on a bin-based database updated by both placement and synthesis based on an infrastructure;

updating a timing of the applying of the transforms;

invoking a synthesis-placement script;

selecting fine-grained synthesis and placement transforms;

invoking the selected transforms within the synthesis-placement script; and

applying transforms that change the physical, electrical, and Boolean domains concurrently.

2. The method claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

moving a design space from one point to another by considering concurrently subsets of fine-grained physical transforms, electrical transforms, and Boolean transforms; and

repeating the method until design convergence is achieved.

3. The method claimed in claim 2, wherein blocks of each of the physical optimizations, electrical optimizations, and Boolean optimizations are interspersed together.

4. The method claimed in claim 3, wherein each of said optimizations is represented as a plurality of transformations, such that the optimizations are divided and interspersed together, to examine each of the physical domains, electrical domains, and Boolean domains concurrently.

5. An apparatus for applying fine-grained transformations during placement synthesis interaction, said apparatus comprising:

a unit for creating and updating of bins;

a unit for applying the transforms on a bin-based database updated by both placement and synthesis based on an infrastructure;

a unit for updating a timing of the applying of the transforms;

a unit for invoking a synthesis-placement script;

a unit for selecting fine-grained synthesis and placement transforms;

a unit for invoking the selected transforms within the synthesis-placement script; and

a unit for applying transforms that change the physical, electrical, and Boolean domains concurrently.

6. The apparatus claimed in claim 5, further comprising a unit for moving a design space from one point to another by considering concurrently subsets of fine-grained physical transforms, electrical transforms, and Boolean transforms.

7. The apparatus claimed in claim 6, wherein blocks of each of the physical optimizations, electrical optimizations, and Boolean optimizations are interspersed together.

8. The apparatus claimed in claim 7, wherein each of said optimizations is represented as a plurality of transformations, such that the optimizations are divided and interspersed together, to examine each of the physical domains, electrical domains, and Boolean domains concurrently.

9. A machine-readable medium having stored thereon at least one sequence of instructions that, when executed, causes a machine to perform a method of applying fine-grained transformations during placement synthesis interaction, wherein the instructions when executed are configured to perform:

creating and updating of bins;

applying the transforms on a bin-based database updated by both placement and synthesis based on an infrastructure;

updating the a timing of the applying transforms;

invoking a synthesis-placement script;

selecting fine-grained synthesis and placement transforms;

invoking the selected transforms within the synthesis-placement script, using a driver; and

applying transforms that change the physical, electrical, and Boolean domains concurrently.

10. The machine-readable medium claimed in claim 9, wherein the instructions are configured to further perform moving a design space from one point to another by considering concurrently subsets of fine-grained physical transforms, electrical transforms, and Boolean transforms;

and

repeating the method until design convergence is achieved.

11. The machine-readable medium claimed in claim 10, wherein blocks of each of the physical optimizations, electrical optimizations, and Boolean optimizations are interspersed together.

12. The machine-readable medium claimed in claim 11, wherein each of said optimizations is represented as a plurality of transformations, such that the optimizations are divided and interspersed together, to examine each of the physical domains, electrical domains, and Boolean domains concurrently.