Synopsys, Inc.

Reshape, Inc.

Jagat B Patel

Paul Kingsley Rodman

Peter Dahl

Brent L Gregory

Byron Dickinson

Margie Levine

William Clark Naylor, Jr

Systems and techniques for optimizing an integrated circuit (IC) design are described. Some embodiments can transform a circuit design into a logically-equivalent circuit design by: (1) creating a Wire-Length-Area Model (WLAM) for a portion of a first circuit design, (2) creating a second circuit design by replacing the portion of the first circuit design by the WLAM, (3) placing and routing the second circuit design to obtain a placed-and-routed second circuit design, and (4) creating a third circuit design that is logically-equivalent to the first circuit design based on the placed-and-routed second circuit design.

Placement-based congestion-aware logic restructuring

A method and system for automatically generating low level design tool commands as dependency graphs from abstracted high level physical design stages. The novel system inputs names of blocks of a hierarchical integrated circuit. Each block name has associated with it certain variables, stages and conditional statements. The stages represent a set of linked physical design processes that are to be executed on the block. Stages can be dependent on other stages and therefore are executed in-order on the block depending on how they are linked in the input set. The system automatically generates, from the input set, a dependency graph for each block. The dependency graph includes a large volume of nodes with associated parameters and options. Each node includes one or more low level program commands (&ldquo;tasks&rdquo;) for directing a number of physical design tools, e.g., programs, to perform various functions with respect to the block. Each node can receive input and generate an output. If the input to a particular node has not been altered, e.g., since the last time the graphs were executed, then that node is not executed in the current run. Dependency graphs that are not data dependent can be executed in parallel. If the input set is altered, a new set of dependency graphs can automatically be generated. By grouping the physical design operations into stages, the novel system allows the user to abstract the problem of dealing with large numbers of physical design tasks into the more manageable problem of dealing with high level &ldquo;stages&rdquo; in the physical design process.

Method and system for automatically generating low level program commands as dependency graphs from high level physical design stages

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Jagat B Patel