Physical design of integrated circuits remains one of the most interesting and challenging arenas in the field of Electronic Design Automation. The ability to integrate more and more devices on our silicon chips requires the algorithms to continuously scale up. Nowadays we can integrate 2e9 transistors on a single 45nm-technology chip. This number will continue to scale for the next couple of technology generations, requiring more transistors to be automatically placed on a chip and connected together. In addition, more and more of the delay is contributed by the wires that interconnect the devices on the chip. This has a profound effect on how physical design flows need to be put together. In the 1990s, it was safe to assume that timing goals of the design could be reached once the devices were placed well on the chip. Today, one does not know whether the timing constraints can be satisfied until the final routing has completed.
As far back as 10 or 15 years ago, people believed that most physical design problems had been solved. But, the continued increase in the number of transistors on the chip, as well as the increased coupling between the physical, timing and logic domains warrant a fresh look at the basic algorithmic foundations of chip implementation. That is exactly what this book provides. It covers the basic algorithms underlying all physical design steps and also shows how they are applied to current instances of the design problems. For example, Chapter 7 provides a great deal of information on special types of routing for specific design situations.
Several other books provide in-depth descriptions of core physical design algorithms and the underlying mathematics, but this book goes a step further. The authors very much realize that the era of individual point algorithms with single objectives is over. Throughout the book they emphasize the multi-objective nature of modern design problems and they bring all the pieces of a physical design flow together in Chapter 8. A complete flow chart, from design partitioning and floorplanning all the way to electrical rule checking, describes all phases of the modern chip implementation flow. Each step is described in the context of the overall flow with references to the preceding chapters for the details.
This book will be appreciated by students and professionals alike. It starts from the basics and provides sufficient background material to get the reader up to speed on the real issues. Each of the chapters by itself provides sufficient introduction and depth to be very valuable. This is especially important in the present era, where experts in one area must understand the effects of their algorithms on the remainder of the design flow. An expert in routing will derive great benefit from reading the chapters on planning and placement. An expert in Design For Manufacturability (DFM) who seeks a better understanding of routing algorithms, and of how these algorithms can be affected by choices made in setting DFM requirements, will benefit tremendously from the chapters on global and detailed routing.