AiMap: Learning to Improve Technology Mapping for ASICs via Delay Prediction

Junfeng Liu, Liwei Ni, Xingquan Li, Min Zhou, Lei Chen, Xing Li, Qinghua Zhao, Shuai Ma

Abstract: Technology mapping is an essential process in the EDA flow which aims to find an optimal implementation of a logic network from a technology library. In ASIC designs, the estimated cell delay w.r.t. the cut has a significant impact on both area and delay of the mapped network. In this work, we first propose formulating cell delay estimation as a regression learning task by incorporating multiple perspective features, such as the structure of logic networks and non-linear cell delays, to guide the mapper search. We design a learning model that incorporates a customized attention mechanism to be aware of the pin delay and jointly learns the hierarchy between the logic network and library, with the help of proposed parameterizable strategies to generate learning labels. Experimental results show that our proposed method noticeably improves area by 12% and delay by 1%, compared with ABC.