Cross talk driven placement

Due to the fast shrinking of process geometries, signal integrity issues are becoming increasingly critical to the performance and reliability of electronic systems. Traditional post-layout based fixing methodologies quickly break down when hundreds of thousands of nets need to be tailored for signal integrity concerns. In order to achieve signal integrity closure, cross talk, electro-migration, IR drop and other effects must be addressed earlier in the design cycle. In this paper, a new placement algorithm considering cross talk minimization is presented. First, a probabilistic technique is presented to estimate the coupling capacitance during coarse placement. Based on this technique, an effective placement flow is introduced to remove the highly coupled spots via placement density control. By addressing cross talk at placement level with this algorithm, the value and count of the highest post route peak noise were successfully reduced in a set of industrial benchmarks. Furthermore, due to reduced coupling capacitance, the design speed is 8% faster on average in comparison with traditional timing-driven, congestion-aware placement flow.