Ripple 2.0
Xu He, Yao Wang, Yang Guo, Evangeline F. Y. Young · ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems · 2016
Routability is one of the most important problems in high-performance circuit designs. From the viewpoint of placement design, two major factors cause routing congestion: (i) interconnections between cells and (ii) connections on macro blockages. In this article, we present a routability-driven placer, Ripple 2.0, which emphasizes both kinds of routing congestion. Several techniques will be presented, including (i) cell inflation with routing path consideration, (ii) congested cluster optimization, (iii) routability-driven cell spreading, and (iv) simultaneous routing and placement for routability refinement. With the official evaluation protocol, Ripple 2.0 outperforms other published academic routability-driven placers. Compared with top results in the ICCAD 2012 contest, Ripple 2.0 achieves a better detailed routing solution obtained by a commercial router.