The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 28, 2001
Filed:
Jun. 18, 1999
Chung-Kuan Cheng, San Diego, CA (US);
Pei-Ning Guo, Milpitas, CA (US);
Other;
Abstract
An EDA tool is provided with a floorplan generator to automatically generate an optimized floorplan for an IC design having a number of design blocks. The floorplanner generates an initial O-tree representation for the design blocks. The floorplanner then perturbs the O-tree representation to seek an alternate O-tree representation that represents an optimized placement of the design blocks in accordance with a cost function. The floorplanner performs the perturbation systematically for all design blocks, traversing the O-tree representation in a depth-first manner and removing one design block at a time. In one embodiment, for each removed design block, the floorplanner also seeks an appropriate re-insertion point for the removed design block systematically by traversing a reduced version of the O-tree representation augmented with candidate insertion points in a depth-first manner. Under the present invention, ceiling and floor contours as well as contour pointers are employed to improve the efficiency of the traversing iterations.