TSUNAMI: An Integrated Timing-Driven Place And Route Research Platform

In this paper, we present an experimental integrated platform for the research, development and evaluation of new VLSI back-end algorithms and design flows. Interconnect scaling to nanometer processes presents many difficult challenges to CAD flows. Academic research on back-end mostly focuses on specific algorithmic issues separately. However one key issue to address also is the cooperation of multiple algorithmic tools. TSUNAMI, our platform, is based on an integrated C++ database around which all tools consistently interact and collaborate. Above this platform a fixed die standard cell timing-driven placement and global routing flow has been developed.