Knowledge-based synthesis of custom VLSI physical design tools; first steps

A description is given of how program synthesis techniques can be applied to the synthesis of technology-sensitive VLSI physical design tools. Physical design refers to the process of reducing a structural description of a piece of hardware down to the geometric layout of an integrated circuit. Successful physical design tools must cope with shifting technology and application environments. The authors describe a synthesis architecture that combines knowledge of the application domain and knowledge of generic programming mechanics. The approach uses a very high-level language to describe algorithms, domain and programming knowledge to select appropriate algorithms and data structures, and code generation to arrive at final executable code. Results are presented detailing the performance and implementation of ELF, a prototype generator for wire-routing applications. Comparisons between a hand-crafted router and an automatically synthesized router are presented.