A flexible hierarchical 3-D module assembler

A module assembler based on a design philosophy that is different from work reported in the literature is presented. Most assemblers are targeted for a `correct by construction´ approach. However, the design philosophy in a mostly handcrafted high performance, high density chip is that of `correct by verification´. The authors´ module assembler is designed with a view to supporting highly flexible layout requirements (e.g. non-slicing, 3-d) and the ability to `assemble´ a netlist for comparison with the netlist extracted from the polygon level layout