Method and System for Optimized Insertion of Repeaters in an Integrated Circuit Design (16-Nov-2009)

Method and System for Optimized Insertion of Repeaters in an Integrated Circuit Design

Disclosed is a method and system for optimized insertion of repeaters in an integrated circuit design.

Repeaters are generally inserted along signal paths between one or more source blocks and one or more sink blocks to preserve the waveform of a signal propagated from a source block to a sink block during Integrated Circuit (IC) design. Placement of a repeater depends on drive strength of the source blocks and planes setting in the IC design. Based on the distance between a source block and a sink block, multiple repeaters may be placed.

The method and system disclosed herein includes breaking Multi Sink Nets in the IC design into multiple point-to-point sections. Each of the multiple point-to-point sections consist of multiple sink blocks. A sink block may be buffered by insertion of a repeater. The insertion of the repeater is based on drive strength of source blocks and planes setting in the IC design. Each repeater inserted becomes a potential source block for other sink blocks in the IC design. Thereafter, the closest sink block from the inserted repeater is considered for buffering.

Placement of a repeater between a source block and a sink block is governed by a blockage avoidance algorithm as shown in Fig. 1. To determine placement of a repeater, a line is drawn between the source block and the sink block. Thereafter, a perpendicular line is drawn at the center of the line drawn between the source block and the sink block. Subsequently, a repeater is placed along the perpendicular line. In case of placement of multiple repeaters, the multiple repeaters are placed along multiple perpendicular lines. For example, in Fig. 1, a perpendicular line is drawn connecting the source block and sink block 1. Accordingly, repeater 1 is placed along a line perpendicular to the center of the line connecting the source block and sink block 1. Therea...