In 1984, while I was following his postgraduate course on VLSI design, my supervisor Dr. David Skellern, asked me if I was interested in investigating intelligent approaches to automatic Ie floorplanning. He told me then: "a circuit that works always looks nice, has a clever data and control flow. A fast way to look at students' Ie projects is by looking at their fioorplans.". Later, I took a course on Knowledge Engineering (KE) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Professor John Gero, who encouraged me to investigate this area of design automation. The resources for such development were really poor at IS&E as KE was a relatively new field of research in Australia at that time. 'Vhatever the difficulties (a good programmmer never blames his tools as David Skellern used to tell me), I undertook the investigation of Knowledge-Based approaches to Ie ftoor planning as my PhD thesis subject with the help of my supervisor and John Gero and the encouragement of all researchers at IS&E , who provided an exciting environment for my research. This volume reports the results of my research during 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987. The voulme deals with Ie ftoorplanning from four perspectives: floorplanning strategy, Knowledge Engineering in the Ie domain, the development of knowledge-based fioorplan ning processes and new floorplanning algorithms for use in the overall strategy.

Klappentext

This book presents an artificial intelligence approach to top-down floorplanning of integrated circuits (IC). The approach divides the floorplanning process into separate knowledge-based and algorithmic tasks. This enables the use of IC specialised knowledge to drive sophisticated floorplanning algorithms and interpret their results. This book describes PIAF, a prototype system that implements the developed approach; special attention is paid to a detailed description of the architecture of PIAF, its interference engine, knowledge representation schemes, explanation facility, and a mechanism for backtracking with context recovery. Furthermore, this volume presents in detail new graph theoretical algorithms for floorplan global routing, and area and shape minimisation. The interaction between these algorithms and the knowledge-based components is described. Novel rule-based techniques for the selection of a floorplan from a family of solutions according to design tools capabilities and circuit description are also presented.

Inhalt
1 Overview.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 Full Custom Design Approach.- 1.3 Structured Design.- 1.4 The Problem.- 1.5 This Volume.- 2 Integrated Circuit Floorplanning.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Top-Down Design Process.- 2.3 Bottom-Up Design Process.- 2.4 Limitations of Algorithmic Floorplanning Approaches: Domain Knowledge.- 2.5 Knowledge-Based Space-Planning.- 2.6 Limitations of a Purely KBS Approach.- 2.7 Discussion & Conclusion.- 3 PIAF: A Combined KBS/Algorithmic Floorplanning System.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 The Combined KBS/Algorithmic Approach.- 3.3 The Floorplanning Strategy.- 3.4 The Communication Solving Process.- 3.5 Generation of Rectangular Topologies.- 3.6 Solution Selection.- 3.7 Communication Border Estimation.- 3.8 Block Dimension Calculation.- 3.9 Estimating Block Area Adjustment.- 3.10 Satisfying Block Area and Routing Adjustments.- 3.11 Prototype System Design.- 3.12 Conclusion.- 4 Implementation and Operation with a Case Study.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Design Issues for PIF.- 4.3 The Structure and Implementation of PIF.- 4.4 The Input to PIAF.- 4.5 KBS Task Implementation.- 4.6 Conclusion.- 4.7 Conclusion.- 5 The Algorithm Library.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Graph Clustering Algorithm.- 5.3 An Algorithm for Building RACGs..- 5.4 Rectangular Dualisation of Graphs.- 5.5 Algorithms for Topological Information Extraction.- 5.6 Optimisation.- 5.7 Interface to Chip Assembly Tools.- 5.8 Interface to the KBS.- 5.9 Conclusion.- 6 Conclusion.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Overview of Achievements.- 6.3 Direction for Future Work.- 6.4 Conclusion.- A Primer on Graphs.- A.1 Introduction.- A.2 Undirected Graphs.- A.3 Palm Tree, Tree Arcs and Fronds.- A.4 Paths.- A.5 Faces.- A.6 Connectivity.- A.7 Biconnectivity, Articulation Points.- A.8 Planarity.- A.9 Short-Cuts, Corner ImplyingPaths, Block Neighbourhood Graphs.- A.10 Rectangular Duals of a Graph.- B An FBD Example.- C Rule Examples.- C.1 Some RACG Building Rules.- C.2 Some Rectangular Topology Selection Rules.- C.3 Examples of a Communication Border Evaluation Rule.