Clock aware placement

US7624366B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• International Business Machines Corporation · US

Inventors

• Charles J. Alpert · Cedar Park, US
• David J. Hathaway · Underhill Center, US
• William R. Migatz · Wappingers Falls, US
• Gi-Joon Nam · Austin, US
• Haoxing Ren · Austin, US
• Paul G. Villarrubia · Austin, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Oct 31, 2006
• Grant date: Nov 24, 2009
• Expiry date: Dec 7, 2027

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F30/392
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

The layout of latches in a common clock domain is efficiently optimized to shrink the physical size of the domain while maintaining timing requirements. The latches are placed in a first layout preferably using quadratic placement, and a star object is built representing an interim clock structure. The latches are weighted based on wire distance from a source of the star object, and then re-placed using the weighting. The weighted placement and repartitioning may be iteratively repeated until a target number of bins is reached. The boundary of the latches in the final global placement is used to define a movebound for further detailed placement.