A Methodology for Reusable Physical Design

Edward Wang, Colin Schmidt, Adam Izraelevitz, John Wright, Borivoje Nikolic, Elad Alon, Jonathan Bachrach
University of California, Berkeley


Abstract

Traditional physical design flows force users to intermix distinct information relating to logical design, physical design, technology, and tool concerns during chip implementation, leading to high design effort, costs, and time-to-market. We introduce Titanium, a physical design generator which remedies these problems via separation of concerns. Through its modular software architecture, Titanium is able to separate tool and technology concerns, while Titanium’s data format separates logical and physical design concerns, enabling physical design information to be generated in sync with changes to the logical design. We evaluate Titanium’s flexibility and effective software architecture by demonstrating wide-ranging reductions in time, cost, and design effort in various physical design tasks through multiple tapeouts using multiple technologies (ranging from 45nm to 16nm), tools, and design architectures.