Methods for incremental circuit physical synthesis

Abstract

Configuration data for an integrated circuit may be generated using logic design equipment to implement a logic design on the integrated circuit. The equipment may perform multiple rounds of incremental physical synthesis, incremental timing analysis, and incremental legalization operations. Each round may involve performing multiple different physical synthesis transforms on the design that are individually rejected until transforms that satisfy legality constraints and improve timing for the logic design are found and incorporated into the netlist. The configuration data may then be generated using the netlist. In this way, the logic design may be incrementally altered and verified during the physical synthesis process. This prevents the need for rejecting or accepting an entire batch logic changes to the netlist even when only some of the changes are non-ideal, thus optimizing circuit performance as well as the compile time required to implement the logic design on the integrated circuit.