Performance Driven Routing with Mulitiple Sources

Jason Cong, Patrick H. Madden

Abstract: Existing routing problems for delay minimization consider the connection of a single source node to a number of sink nodes, with the objective of minimizing the delay from the source to all sinks, or a set of critical sinks. In this paper, we study the problem of routing nets with multiple sources, such as those found in signal busses. This new model assumes that each node in a net may be a source, a sink, or both. The objective is to optimize the routing topology to minimize the total weighted delay between all node pairs (or a subset of critical node pairs). We present two heuristic algorithms for the multiple-source performance-driven routing problem based on efficient construction of minimum-diameter minimum-cost Steiner trees. Experimental results for sub-micron IC technology show as much as an 11% reduction in the maximum interconnect delay, while MCM results show as much as a 13% reduction, when compared to conventional minimum Steiner tree based routing algorithms.