Integrated circuit design

Abstract

A computer-method is provided for designing a router network to connect components of an integrated circuit, where the router network comprises a plurality of connected data routing elements. The method comprises generating an undirected graph to represent a mesh of candidate router elements, where the candidate data routing elements are positioned dependent on at least one characteristic of the integrated circuit. The undirected graph comprises a node to represent each candidate data routing element and an edge to represent each connection between the candidate data routing elements. A candidate router network generation process is then performed a plurality of times, where each performance of the candidate router network generation process comprises: generating a tree structure from a plurality of possible tree structures to interconnect the nodes of the undirected graph; for each node in the tree structure, computing a compactness index indicative of a path cost associated with connections to at least a subset of other nodes in the tree structure; for each component to be connected to the router network, identifying a set of available nodes within the tree structure and connecting the component to a selected node within that set taking account of the compactness index of the nodes within the set, to thereby establish a candidate router network; and computing a cost value for the candidate router network taking into account each pair of components that are to communicate with each other via the candidate router network. One of the candidate router network is then selected as the router network based on the computed cost value for each candidate router network.