3D-STAF: scalable temperature and leakage aware floorplanning for three-dimensional integrated circuits

Abstract— Thermal issues are a primary concern in the threedimensional (3D) integrated circuit (IC) design. Temperature, area, and wire length must be simultaneously optimized during 3D floorplanning, significantly increasing optimization complexity. Most existing floorplanners use combinatorial stochastic optimization techniques, hampering performance and scalability when used for 3D floorplanning. In this work, we propose and evaluate a scalable, temperature-aware, force-directed floorplanner called 3D-STAF. Force-directed techniques, although efficient at reacting to physical information such as temperature gradients, must eventually eliminate overlap. This can cause significant displacement when used for heterogeneous blocks. To smooth the transition from an unconstrained 3D placement to a legalized, layer-assigned floorplan, we propose a three-stage force-directed optimization flow combined with new legalization techniques that eliminate white spaces and block overlappi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICCAD
• Authors: Pingqiang Zhou, Yuchun Ma, Zhuoyuan Li, Robert P. Dick, Li Shang, Hai Zhou, Xianlong Hong, Qiang Zhou
• Keywords: Force-directed Techniques, Hardware, ICCAD 2007, Stochastic Optimization Techniques, Three-stage Force-directed Optimization