VLSI Physical Design Automation

Summary

The sheer size of the VLSI circuit, the complexity of the overall design process, the desired performance of the circuit and the cost of designing a chip dictate that CAD tools should be developed for all the phases. Also, the design process must be divided into different stages because of the complexity of entire process. Physical design is one of the steps in the VLSI design cycle. In this step, each component of a circuit is converted into a set of geometric patterns which achieves the functionality of the component. The physical design step can further be divided into several substeps. All the substeps of physical design step are interrelated. Efficient and effective algorithms are required to solve different problems in each of the substeps. Good solutions at each step are required, since a poor solution at an earlier stage prevents a good solution at a later stage. Despite significant research efforts in this field, CAD tools still lag behind the technological advances in fabrication. This calls for the development of efficient algorithms for physical design automation.