PipeRoute: a pipelining-aware router for FPGAs

We present a pipelining-aware router for FPGAs. The problem of routing pipelined signals is different from the conventional FPGA routing problem. For example, the two terminal N-Delay pipelined routing problem is to find the lowest cost route between a source and sink that goes through at least N (N > 1) distinct pipelining resources. In the case of a multi-terminal pipelined signal, the problem is to find a Minimum Spanning Tree that contains sufficient pipelining resources such that the delay constraint at each sink is satisfied. We begin this work by proving that the two terminal N-Delay problem is NP-Complete. We then propose an optimal algorithm for finding a lowest cost 1-Delay route. Next, the optimal 1-Delay router is used as the building block for a greedy two terminal N-Delay router. Finally, a multiterminal routing algorithm (PipeRoute) that effectively leverages the 1-Delay and N-Delay routers is proposed. PipeRoute’s performance is evaluated by routing a set of retim...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: FPGA
• Authors: Akshay Sharma, Carl Ebeling, Scott Hauck
• Keywords: FPGA 2003, FPGA Routing Problem, Hardware, Minimum Spanning Tree, Routing