4. Floorplanning
• Floorplan of an integrated circuit
is a schematic representation of
tentative placement of its major
functional blocks.
• Depending on the design
methodology being followed, the
actual definition of a floorplan
may differ.
5. Why Floorplanning?
The floorplanning problem is to plan the
positions and shapes of the modules at the
beginning of the design cycle to optimize the
circuit performance:
– chip area
– total wirelength
– delay of critical path
– routability
– others, e.g., noise, heat dissipation, etc.
6. Floorplanning
Goals
• Assign shape and location of blocks.
• Decide location of I/O pads.
• Decide location and number of power pads.
• Decide type of power distribution.
• Decide location and type of clock distribution.
Objectives
• Keep highly connected blocks physically close to each other.
• Minimize chip area.
• Minimize delay.
7. 7
Floorplanning
Input
Set of blocks.
Area estimation.
Possible block shapes.
Number of terminals.
Netlist.
Output
Shapes (Area & Aspect Ratio) and
locations of blocks.
Soft Blocks
• Flexible shape
• I/O positions not yet determined
Hard Blocks
•Fixed shape
•Fixed I/O pin positions
8. Design Styles
Full Custom
• Floorplanning is needed.
Standard Cell
• Fixed cell dimensions. Floorplanning translates into a
placement problem.
• Floorplanning may be required for large cells if they are
partitioned into several blocks.
Gate Array
• Placement problem.
9. Slicing and Non-Slicing Floorplan
Slicing Floorplan:
One that can be
obtained by repetitively
subdividing (slicing)
rectangles horizontally or
vertically.
Non-Slicing Floorplan:
One that may not be
obtained by repetitively
subdividing alone.
10. `
10
Floorplanning
Area
Deadspace
Minimizing area = Minimizing deadspace
Wire length estimation
• Exact wire length not known until after routing.
• Pin position not known.
• How to estimate?
• Center to center estimation.
Definition 6.1 (Critical path) A critical path is a set of conducting paths such that:i)each conducting path is between a generic node and a ground node, or between a generic node and a power supply node, and is composed by MOSFETs; andii)each final node of a conducting path is either connected to a gate of a MOSFET comprising another critical path, or is an output of the circuit; andiii)a change in the state of any MOSFET gates in the first conducting path propagates till the last conducting path, causing a change in the critical path output node.