Performance-Driven Dual-Rail Routing Architecture for Structured ASIC Design Style

In recent years, structured application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design style has lessened the importance of mask cost. Multiple structured ASIC chip designs share the same pre-fabricated device and wire masks. Nevertheless, the interconnection delay in a pre-fabricated wire slows down circuit performance as a result of high capacitive load. We propose a dual-rail routing architecture that reduces wire delay by 10% to 15% compared to the original routing architecture. Furthermore, we propose a dual-rail insertion algorithm to reduce routing area overhead. The experimental results demonstrate that our dual-rail technique reduces wire delay by 9.8% with 4.8% routing area overhead and improves overall circuit performance by 7.0%.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TCAD
• Authors: Fu-Wei Chen, Yi-Yu Liu
• Keywords: Circuit Performance, Routing, Software Engineering, TCAD 2010, Wire Delay