Steiner network construction for timing critical nets

Conventionally, signal net routing is almost always implemented as Steiner trees. However, non-tree topology is often superior on timing performance as well as tolerance to open faults and variations. These advantages are particularly appealing for timing critical net routings in nano-scale VLSI designs where interconnect delay is a performance bottleneck and variation effects are increasingly remarkable. We propose Steiner network construction heuristics which can generate either tree or non-tree with different slackwirelength tradeoff, and handle both long path and short path constraints. Incremental non-tree delay update techniques are developed to facilitate fast Steiner network evaluations. Extensive experiments in different scenarios show that our heuristics usually improve timing slack by hundreds of pico seconds compared to traditional tree approaches. Categories and Subject Descriptors B.7.2 [Hardware]: INTEGRATED CIRCUITS--layout General Terms Algorithms, Performance, Reliab...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Shiyan Hu, Qiuyang Li, Jiang Hu, Peng Li
• Keywords: Computer Architecture, DAC 2006, Net Routings, Steiner Network, Steiner Network Construction