Provably Good Global Buffering Using an Available Buffer Block Plan

To implement high-performance global interconnect without impacting the performance of existing blocks, the use of buffer blocks is increasingly popular in structured-custom and block-based ASIC/SOC methodologies. Recent works by Cong et al. [6] and Tang and Wong [25] give algorithms to solve the buffer block planning problem. In this paper we address the problem of how to perform buffering of global nets given an existing buffer block plan. Assuming as in [6, 25] that global nets have been already decomposed into two-pin connections, we give a provably good algorithm based on a recent approach of Garg and K¨onemann [8] and Fleischer [7]. Our method routes connections using available buffer blocks, such that required upper and lower bounds on buffer intervals – as well as wirelength upper bounds per connection – are satisfied. Unlike [6, 25], our model allows more than one buffer to be inserted into any given connection. In addition, our algorithm observes buffer parity constrai...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ICCAD
• Authors: Feodor F. Dragan, Andrew B. Kahng, Ion I. Mandoiu, Sudhakar Muddu, Alexander Zelikovsky
• Keywords: Available Buffer Blocks, Buffer Block Plan, Buffer Blocks, Hardware, ICCAD 2000