Patent ID: 8689165

Claim:
A machine-implemented method comprising: determining fanout of a driving component in a representation of an integrated circuit (IC); determining, for the driving component, critical loads and non-critical loads in the representation of the IC driven by the driving component; determining use of existing wiring resources used to connect the loads to the driving component; computing a routing net tree for each net comprising a first set of the existing wiring resources connected to the critical loads and a second set of the existing wiring resources connected to the non-critical loads at the fanout of the driving component; and optimizing a design of the IC by reducing the fanout of the driving component by using the first set of the existing wiring resources to connect the critical loads to one of the driving component and a replica of the driving component, and the second set of the existing wiring resources to connect the non-critical loads using another one of the driving component and the replica of the driving component, wherein at least one of the determining and optimizing is performed using a processor.