1,254 research outputs found
Cycle time optimization by timing driven placement with simultaneous netlist transformations
We present new concepts to integrate logic synthesis and physical design. Our methodology uses general Boolean transformations as known from technology-independent synthesis, and a recursive bi-partitioning placement algorithm. In each partitioning step, the precision of the layout data increases. This allows effective guidance of the logic synthesis operations for cycle time optimization. An additional advantage of our approach is that no complicated layout corrections are needed when the netlist is changed
Performance and power optimization in VLSI physical design
As VLSI technology enters the nanoscale regime, a great amount of efforts have
been made to reduce interconnect delay. Among them, buffer insertion stands out
as an effective technique for timing optimization. A dramatic rise in on-chip buffer
density has been witnessed. For example, in two recent IBM ASIC designs, 25% gates
are buffers.
In this thesis, three buffer insertion algorithms are presented for the procedure
of performance and power optimization. The second chapter focuses on improving circuit performance under inductance effect. The new algorithm works under
the dynamic programming framework and runs in provably linear time for multiple
buffer types due to two novel techniques: restrictive cost bucketing and efficient delay
update. The experimental results demonstrate that our linear time algorithm consistently outperforms all known RLC buffering algorithms in terms of both solution
quality and runtime. That is, the new algorithm uses fewer buffers, runs in shorter
time and the buffered tree has better timing.
The third chapter presents a method to guarantee a high fidelity signal transmission in global bus. It proposes a new redundant via insertion technique to reduce
via variation and signal distortion in twisted differential line. In addition, a new
buffer insertion technique is proposed to synchronize the transmitted signals, thus
further improving the effectiveness of the twisted differential line. Experimental results demonstrate a 6GHz signal can be transmitted with high fidelity using the new
approaches. In contrast, only a 100MHz signal can be reliably transmitted using a
single-end bus with power/ground shielding. Compared to conventional twisted differential line structure, our new techniques can reduce the magnitude of noise by 45%
as witnessed in our simulation.
The fourth chapter proposes a buffer insertion and gate sizing algorithm for
million plus gates. The algorithm takes a combinational circuit as input instead of
individual nets and greatly reduces the buffer and gate cost of the entire circuit.
The algorithm has two main features: 1) A circuit partition technique based on the
criticality of the primary inputs, which provides the scalability for the algorithm, and
2) A linear programming formulation of non-linear delay versus cost tradeoff, which
formulates the simultaneous buffer insertion and gate sizing into linear programming
problem. Experimental results on ISCAS85 circuits show that even without the circuit
partition technique, the new algorithm achieves 17X speedup compared with path
based algorithm. In the meantime, the new algorithm saves 16.0% buffer cost, 4.9%
gate cost, 5.8% total cost and results in less circuit delay
A Methodology for Cell Merging Circuit Transformation on Post-placement High Speed Design
This paper proposes a localize circuit transformation algorithm to further optimize the post-placement netlist in order to improve the overall timing of a design. The proposed algorithm reduces the total cell delay and net delay of timing violation paths by replacing a small group of cells (form up by two to three cells) that are placed close to each other with a functional equivalent standard cell available in the technology library. The algorithm has been implemented and applied to a number of optimized postplacement netlists which have went through conventional post-placement circuit transformation optimization processes such as gate relocation, cell re-sizing, repeater insertion and cell replication. The experimental results show that on average, this algorithm is able to further improve the timing of the optimized post-placement netlist by 27.75%, while keeping the design area increase by 0.2%
Simultaneous slack budgeting and retiming for synchronous circuits optimization
Abstract- With the challenges of growing functionality and scaling chip size, the possible performance improvements should be considered in the earlier IC design stages, which gives more freedom to the later optimization. Potential slack as an effective metric of possible performance improvements is considered in this work which, as far as we known, is the first work that maximizes the potential slack by retiming for synchronous sequential circuit. A simultaneous slack budgeting and incremental retiming algorithm is proposed for maximizing potential slack. The overall slack budget is optimized by relocating the FFs iteratively with the MIS-based slack estimation. Compared with the potential slack of a well-known min-period retiming, our algorithm improves potential slack averagely 19.6 % without degrading the circuit performance in reasonable runtime. Furthermore, at the expense of a small amount of timing performance, 0.52 % and 2.08%, the potential slack is increased averagely by 19.89 % and 28.16 % separately, which give a hint of the tradeoff between the timing performance and the slack budget.
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