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:
Jul. 05, 2005
Filed:
Sep. 26, 2002
Charles Jay Alpert, Round Rock, TX (US);
Chong-nuen Chu, Ames, IA (US);
Rama Gopal Gandham, Wappinhgers Falls, NY (US);
Milos Hrkic, Austin, TX (US);
Jiang HU, College Station, TX (US);
Chandramouli V. Kashyap, Round Rock, TX (US);
Stephen Thomas Quay, Austin, TX (US);
Charles Jay Alpert, Round Rock, TX (US);
Chong-Nuen Chu, Ames, IA (US);
Rama Gopal Gandham, Wappinhgers Falls, NY (US);
Milos Hrkic, Austin, TX (US);
Jiang Hu, College Station, TX (US);
Chandramouli V. Kashyap, Round Rock, TX (US);
Stephen Thomas Quay, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for incorporating driver sizing into buffer insertion such that the two optimization techniques are performed simultaneously are provided. The apparatus and method extends van Ginneken's algorithm to handle driver sizing by treating a source node as a 'driver library.' With the apparatus and method, the circuit design is converted to a Steiner tree representation of the circuit design. Buffer insertion is performed on the Steiner tree using the van Ginneken algorithm to generate a first set of possible optimal solutions. For each solution in the first set, a driver of the same type as the original driver in the Steiner tree is selected from a driver library and virtually inserted into the solution. A delay penalty is retrieved for the selected driver, which is then used long with the new driver's characteristics to generate a second set of solutions based o the first set of solutions.