In the design of high performance VLSI systems, minimization of clock skew is an increasingly important objective. Additionally, wirelength of clock routing trees should be minimized in order to reduce system power requirements and deformation of the clock pulse at the synchronizing elements of the system. In this paper, we present the Deferred-Merge Embedding (DME) algorithm, which in linear time embeds any given connection topology into the Manhattan plane to create a clock tree with zero skew while minimizing total wirelength. Extensive experimental results show that the algorithm yields exact zero skew trees with 9% to 16% wirelength reduction over previous constructions [5] [6]. The DME algorithm may be applied to either the Elmore or the linear delay model, and yields optimal total wirelength for linear delay. 1 Introduction In synchronous VLSI designs, circuit speed is increasingly limited by clock skew, which is the maximum difference in arrival times of the clocking signal ...

this paper, we study the optimal wiresizing problem for nets with multiple sources under the RC tree model and the Elmore delay model. We decompose the routing tree for a multisource net into the source subtree (SST) and a set of loading subtrees (LSTs), and show that the optimal wiresizing solution satisfies a number of interesting properties, including: the LST separability, the LST monotone property, the SST local monotone property, and the dominance property. Furthermore, we study the optimal wiresizing problem using a variable segment-division rather than an a priori fixed segment-division as in all previous works and reveal the bundled refinement property. These properties lead to efficient algorithms to compute the optimal solutions. We have tested our algorithm on nets extracted from the multilayer layout for a high-performance Intel microprocessor. Accurate SPICE simulation shows that our methods reduce the average delay by up to 23.5% and the maximum delay by up to 37.8%, respectively, for the submicron CMOS technology when compared to the minimal wire width solution. In addition, the algorithm based on the variable segment-division yields a speedup of over 1003 time and does not lose any accuracy, when compared with the algorithm based on the a priori fixed segment-division

We present two critical-sink routing tree (CSRT) constructions which exploit critical-path information that becomes available during timing-driven layout. Our CS-Steiner heuristics with "Global Slack Removal" modify traditional Steiner constructions and produce routing trees with significantly lower criticalsink delays compared with existing performance-driven methods. We also propose a new class of Elmore routing tree (ERT) constructions, which iteratively add tree edges to minimize Elmore delay. This direct optimization of Elmore delay yields trees that improve delays to identified critical sinks by up to 69 % over minimum Steiner routings. ERTs also improve performance over such recent methods as [1] [6] when no critical sinks are specified.

We address the efficient construction of interconnection trees with near-optimal delay properties. Our study begins from first principles: we consider the accuracy and fidelity of easily-computed delay models (specifically, Elmore delay) with respect to the delay values computed from detailed simulation of underlying physical phenomena (e.g., SPICE simulator output). Our studies show that minimization of Elmore delay is a high-accuracy, high-fidelity interconnect objective within a range of IC interconnect technologies. We propose an efficient low delay tree (LDT) heuristic which uses a greedy construction to minimize maximum sink delay for a given (monotone) delay function. For comparison purposes, we also generate optimal routing trees (ORTs) under Elmore delay using exhaustive search with branch-and-bound pruning. Experimental results show that the LDT heuristic approximates ORTs very accurately: for nets with up to seven pins, LDT trees have on average a maximum sink dela...

We develop an analytical delay model based on rst and second moments to incorporate inductance e ects into the delay estimate for interconnection lines. Delay estimates using our analytical model are within 15 % of SPICE-computed delay across a wide range of interconnect parameter values. We also extend our delay model for estimation of source-sink delays in arbitrary interconnect trees. For the small tree topology considered, we observe improvements of at least 18 % in the accuracy of delay estimates when compared to the Elmore model (which isindependent of inductance), even though our estimates are as easy to compute as Elmore delay. The speedup of delay estimation via our analytical model is several orders of magnitude when compared to a simulation methodology such as SPICE. 1.

Analysis of Elmore delay in distributed RC tree structures shows the influence of both tree cost and tree radius on signal delay in VLSI interconnects. We give new and efficient interconnection tree constructions that smoothly combine the minimum cost and the minimum radius objectives, by combining respectively optimal algorithms due to Prim and Dijkstra. Previous "shallow-light" techniques [2, 3, 8, 13] are both less direct and less effective: in practice, our methods achieve uniformly superior cost-radius tradeoffs. Detailed timing simulations for a range of IC and MCM interconnect technologies show that our wirelength savings yield reduced signal delays when compared to shallow-light or standard minimum spanning tree and Steiner tree routing. 1 Introduction and Motivation With the scaling of device technology and die size, interconnection delay now contributes up to 50% to 70% of the clock cycle in dense, high performance circuits [4]. Performance-driven layout design has therefore ...

Abstract—Closed-form solutions for the 50 % delay, rise time, overshoots, and settling time of signals in an tree are presented. These solutions have the same accuracy characteristics of the Elmore delay for trees and preserves the simplicity and recursive characteristics of the Elmore delay. Specifically, the complexity of calculating the time domain responses at all the nodes of an tree is linearly proportional to the number of branches in the tree and the solutions are always stable. The closed-form expressions introduced here consider all damping conditions of an circuit including the underdamped response, which is not considered by the Elmore delay due to the nonmonotone nature of the response. The continuous analytical nature of the solutions makes these expressions suitable for design methodologies and optimization techniques. Also, the solutions have significantly improved accuracy as compared to the Elmore delay for an overdamped response. The solutions introduced here for trees can be practically used for the same purposes that the Elmore delay is used for trees.

Gate sizing consists of choosing for each node of a mapped network a gate implementation in the library so that some cost function is optimized under some constraints. It has a significant impact on the delay, power dissipation, and area of the final circuit. This paper compares five gate sizing algorithms targeting discrete, non-linear, non-unimodal, constrained optimization. The goal is to overcome the non-linearity and nonunimodality of the delay and the power to achieve good quality results within a reasonable CPU time, e.g., handling a 10000 node network in 2 hours. We compare the five algorithms on constraint free delay optimization and delay constrained power optimization, and show that one method is superior to the others. 1 Introduction Early work on gate sizing targeting area/delay optimization can be found in [20, 12]. Using a RC delay model, TILOS [8] expresses the delay and area as posynomials. Geometric programming or heuristics based greedy approaches can be used to so...

This paper addresses several issues involved for routing in Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) that have both horizontal and vertical routing channels, with wire segments of various lengths. Routing is studied by using CAD routing tools to map a set of benchmark circuits into FPGAs, and measuring the effects that various parameters of the CAD tools have on the implementation of the circuits. A two-stage routing strategy of global followed by detailed routing is used, and the effects of both of these CAD stages are discussed, with emphasis on detailed routing. We present a new detailed routing algorithm designed specifically for the types of routing structures found in the most recent generation of FPGAs, and show that the new algorithm achieves significantly better results than previously published FPGA routers with respect to the speed-performance of implemented circuits. The experiments presented in this paper address both of the key metrics for FPGA routing tools, namely the eff...

This paper reports two sets of important results in our exploration of an interconnect-centric design methodology for deep submicron (DSM) designs: (I) We obtain a set of efficient, accurate performance and area estimation models for optimal wire sizing (OWS) using two simple wire sizing schemes, namely single-width sizing (1-WS) and two-width sizing (2-WS). These simple, efficient estimation models enable us to explore the trade-off between delay and area of interconnect designs. They also enable high level design tools to consider interconnect layout optimization during design planning. (II) Guided by our interconnect estimation models, we study the interconnect architecture planning problem for wire-width designs. We achieve a rather surprising result which suggests that two pre-determined wire widths per metal layer are sufficient to achieve near-optimal performance for current and future technologies from 0.25m to 0.07m generations.. This result will greatly simplify the routing architecture and routing tools for DSM designs. We believe that our interconnect estimation and planning results will have a significant impact to guide high-performance DSM designs.