As integrated circuits are migrated to more advanced technologies, it has become clear that crosstalk is an important physical phenomenon that must be taken into account. Crosstalk has primarily been a concern for ASICs, multi-chip modules, and custom chips, however, it will soon become a concern in FPGAs. In this paper, we describe the first published crosstalk-aware router that targets FPGAs. We show that, in a representative FPGA architecture implemented in a 0.18µm technology, the average routing delay in the presence of crosstalk can be reduced by 7.1% compared to a router with no knowledge of crosstalk. About half of this improvement is due to a tighter delay estimator, and half is due to an improved routing algorithm. Categories and Subject Descriptors B.7.2 [Integrated Circuits]: Design Aids – placement and routing. General Terms Algorithms. Keywords Field-Programmable Gate Arrays, Routing Algorithms, Crosstalk.
Steven J. E. Wilton