Research in Physical Design of VLSI

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

In order to design and manufacture future generations of complex VLSI chips, this project explores new techniques for the physical design of integrated circuits and systems. This project focuses on (1) the development of interconnect planning algorithms that are essential to the change in design paradigm from gate-centric approach to interconnect-centric approach, (2) the development of circuit optimization methods using the transmission line delay model which give more accurate results than algorithms based upon the commonly used lumped circuit models, (3) the development of physical design algorithms which can anticipate errors to be introduced by the photo-lithography process in chip manufacturing, and (4) the development of ultra-fast routing techniques for field-programmable chips suitable to be used in reconfigurable computing where "on-the-fly" routing is needed in real-time.