User-directed timing-driven synthesis

Abstract

Users or applications provide optimization information that specifies performance-critical portions of the design. Users can identify performance-critical portions of their designs from a priori evaluation of their design or by analyzing the results of previous compilations of their design or similar designs. An application may extract and analyze performance information from previous compilations of the design or similar designs to automatically specify the performance-critical portions of the design. The compilation software uses this specification to focus the appropriate types and amount of optimization on different portions of the design. The compilation software may use additional optimization techniques and/or may allocate additional computing resources to optimize the performance of performance-critical portions of the design. Other portions of the design that are not performance-critical may be optimized using balanced optimization techniques. Portions of the design may be designated as critical with respect to timing, area, power consumption or any other performance aspect.