The other side is represented by the floorplanning and layout specialists, who are concerned with improved placement algorithms and deal with circuits at the netlist level. A pre-requisite for dialog is a common language and frame of reference. Interconnect technologists are naturally inclined towards the various dialects of the physical sciences, while the language of floorplanning and layout draws heavily from computer science. This has cast the literature of system level interconnect prediction over a wide range of journals and conference proceedings and has made many valuable contributions difficult to digest by researchers tending towards one constituency or the other. This goal of this tutorial is to provide an overview of the most recent research at the interface of these two disciplines using a common frame of reference.
Special emphasis is placed on highlighting the implicit assumptions of the various models.
Cycle time models are used to tie together the diverse components of the tutorial and it is hoped that by the end of the tutorial the attendees will have enough information to construct their own models to investigate issues ranging as wide as optimal repeater insertion, fat wiring schemes, to the effects of different partitioning and placement strategies on system level performance. Tutorial outline 1. Netlist formats, design flow, and statistical characterization 3. In 1987 he joined the faculty of the University of Delaware where he is currently an associate professor. During 2000 he is on a leave of absence from the University, working at the IC Design Center of Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands.