VLSI Design Automation Algorithms Course

Course Description

The course will cover the techniques and algorithms for physical design of Integrated circuits. Topics include partitioning, floor-planning, placement, and routing of electronic chips. Bulk of new challenges in modern chip design corresponding with proposed techniques to fix them will be discussed in the class. This course make a good view on low level chip design and manufacturing for graduate (and post-graduate) students and may open a wide research aspect for them.

Course References

  1. Andrew B. Kahng, Jens Lienig, Igor L. Markov, Jin Hu, VLSI Physical Design: From Graph Partitioning to Timing Closure, 2022.
  2. N. Sherwani, “Algorithms For VLSI Physical Design Automation”, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 3rd edition, 2002.
  3. Research papers (Will be introduced during the course)

Grading

  • Homework and Projects: 40%
  • Research / presentation: 20%
  • Final exam: 40%

 Outline

Session Subject Ref.
1 Introduction and motivation [1]
2 Digital design flow and physical design stage [1]
3 A review on layout, 2D and 3D processing and Emerging VLSI technologies Papers
4 Design styles and chip packaging [1]
5 Data structures an basic algorithms: optimization and complexity theory [1]
6 Data structures an basic algorithms: Review on graph theory [1]
7 Data structures an basic algorithms: Introducing the Atlas Development Toolkit (ADT) [1]
8 Partitioning [1]
9 Partitioning [1]
10 Floorplanning [1]
11 Floorplanning [1]
12 New trends for partitioning and Floorplanning (3D architectures, HMetis, …) Papers
13 Placement the cells and IOs [1]
14 Placement the cells and IOs [1]
15 New trends in placement (placement for 3D architectures) Papers
16 New trends in placement (Performance driven) Papers
17 Global routing [1]
18 Global routing [1]
19 New trends in global routing (Box router, Hot-spot management, …) Papers
20 Buffer Insertion and planning Papers
21 Detailed routing [1]
23 Detailed routing [1]
24 New trends in detailed routing Papers
25 Clock routing Papers
26 Physical design of FPGAs Papers
27 Physical design of FPGAs Papers
28 Physical design of FPGAs Papers
29 Process variation and soft errors Papers
30 New interconnect technologies Papers
31 Student seminars
32 Student seminars


For more details refer to <courseware.sbu.ac.ir>.