ISPD 2017 TOC

SESSION: Welcome and Keynote Address

Technology Options for Beyond-CMOS

  • Young
    Ian

CMOS integrated circuit technology for computation is at an inflexion point. Although
this is the technology which has enabled the semiconductor industry to make vast progress
over the past 30-plus years, it is expected to see challenges going beyond …

SESSION: Machine Learning in EDA

The Quest for The Ultimate Learning Machine

  • Dubey
    Pradeep

Traditionally, there has been a division of labor between computers and humans where
all forms of number crunching and bit manipulations are left to computers; whereas,
intelligent decision-making is left to us humans. We are now at the cusp of a major

Deep Learning in the Enhanced Cloud

  • Chung
    Eric

Deep Learning has emerged as a singularly critical technology for enabling human-like
intelligence in online services such as Azure, Office 365, Bing, Cortana, Skype, and
other high-valued scenarios at Microsoft. While Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have …

Bilinear Lithography Hotspot Detection

  • Zhang
    Hang

Advanced semiconductor process technologies are producing various circuit layout patterns,
and it is essential to detect and eliminate problematic ones, which are called lithography
hotspots. These hotspots are formed due to light diffraction and …

Routability Optimization for Industrial Designs at Sub-14nm Process Nodes Using Machine
Learning

  • Chan
    Wei-Ting J.

Design rule check (DRC) violations after detailed routing prevent a design from being
taped out. To solve this problem, state-of-the-art commercial EDA tools global-route
the design to produce a global-route congestion map; this map is used by the …

SESSION: Monday Afternoon Keynote

Pushing the boundaries of Moore’s Law to transition from FPGA to All Programmable
Platform

  • Bolsens
    Ivo

Since their inception, FPGAs have changed significantly in their capacity and architecture.
The devices we use today are called upon to solve problems in mixed-signal, high-speed
communications, signal processing and compute acceleration that early …

POSTER SESSION: Invited Poster Presentation

How Game Engines Can Inspire EDA Tools Development: A use case for an open-source physical design library

  • Fontana
    Tiago

Similarly to game engines, physical design tools must handle huge amounts of data.
Although the game industry has been employing modern software development concepts
such as data-oriented design, most physical design tools still relies on object-…

Rsyn: An Extensible Physical Synthesis Framework

  • Flach
    Guilherme

Due to the advanced stage of development on EDA science, it has been increasingly
difficult to implement realistic software infrastructures in academia so that new
problems and solutions are tested in a meaningful and consistent way. In this paper
we …

SESSION: Nontraditional Physical Design Challenges

Research Challenges in Security-Aware Physical Design

  • Karri
    Ramesh

The presentation will discuss security techniques such as IC camouflaging and logic
encryption.

Challenges and Opportunities: From Near-memory Computing to In-memory Computing

  • Khoram
    Soroosh

The confluence of the recent advances in technology and the ever-growing demand for
large-scale data analytics created a renewed interest in a decades-old concept, processing-in-memory
(PIM). PIM, in general, may cover a very wide spectrum of compute …

Physical Design Considerations of One-level RRAM-based Routing Multiplexers

  • Tang
    Xifan

Resistive Random Access Memory(RRAM) technology opens the opportunity for granting both high-performance and low-power
features to routing multiplexers. In this paper, we study the physical design considerations
related to RRAM-based routing …

Hierarchical and Analytical Placement Techniques for High-Performance Analog Circuits

  • Xu
    Biying

High-performance analog integrated circuits usually require minimizing critical parasitic
loading, which can be modeled by the critical net wire length in the layout stage.
In order to reduce post-layout circuit performance degradation, critical net …

SESSION: Tuesday Keynote Address

Physical Design Challenges and Innovations to Meet Power, Speed, and Area Scaling
Trend

  • Lu
    Lee-Chung

In the advanced process technologies of 7nm and beyond, the semiconductor industry
faces several new challenges: (1) aggressive chip area scaling with economically feasible
process technology development, (2) sufficient performance enhancement of …

SESSION: Clock and Timing

Modern Challenges in Constructing Clocks

  • Alpert
    Charles J.

Clock Tree Construction based on Arrival Time Constraints

  • Ewetz
    Rickard

There are striking differences between constructing clock trees based on dynamic implied
skew constraints and based on static arrival time constraints. Dynamic implied skew
constraints allow the full timing margins to be utilized, but the constraints …

A Fast Incremental Cycle Ratio Algorithm

  • Wu
    Gang

In this paper, we propose an algorithm to quickly find the maximum cycle ratio (MCR)
on an incrementally changing directed cyclic graph. Compared with traditional MCR
algorithms which have to recalculate everything from scratch at each incremental …

iTimerM: Compact and Accurate Timing Macro Modeling for Efficient Hierarchical Timing Analysis

  • Lee
    Pei-Yu

As designs continue to grow in size and complexity, EDA paradigm shifts from flat
to hierarchical timing analysis. In this paper, we propose compact and accurate timing
macro modeling, which is the key to achieve efficient and accurate hierarchical …

SESSION: Routability Considerations

DSAR: DSA aware Routing with Simultaneous DSA Guiding Pattern and Double Patterning Assignment

  • Ou
    Jiaojiao

Directed self-assembly (DSA) is a promising solution for fabrication of contacts and
vias for advanced technology nodes. In this paper, we study a DSA aware detailed routing
problem, where DSA guiding pattern assignment and guiding pattern double …

Automatic Cell Layout in the 7nm Era

  • Cremer
    Pascal

Multi patterning technology used in 7nm technology and beyond imposes more and more
complex design rules on the layout of cells. The often non local nature of these new
design rules is a great challenge not only for human designers but also for existing

Improving Detailed Routability and Pin Access with 3D Monolithic Standard Cells

  • Shi
    Daohang

We study the impact of using 3D monolithic (3DM) standard cells on improving detailed
routability and pin access. We propose a design flow which transforms standard rows
of single-tier “2D” cells into rows of standard 3DM cells folded into two tiers. …

SESSION: Commemoration for Professor Satoshi Goto

The Spirit of in-house CAD Achieved by the Legend of Master “Prof. Goto” and his Apprentices

  • Nakamura
    Yuichi

In this paper, a legend story to develop CAD algorithms and CAD/EDA tools for NEC’s
in-house use is described. About 30 years ago, since there are few commercial CAD
tools, ICT vendors had to develop their own CAD tools to enhance the performance of

Generalized Force Directed Relaxation with Optimal Regions and Its Applications to
Circuit Placement

  • Chang
    Yao Wen

This paper introduces popular algorithmic paradigms for circuit placement, presents
Goto’s classical placement framework based on the generalized force directed relaxation
(GFDR) method with an optimal region (OR) formulation and its impacts on modern …

100x Evolution of Video Codec Chips

  • Zhou
    Jinjia

In the past two decades, there has been tremendous progress in video compression technologies.
Meanwhile, the use of these technologies, along with the ever-increasing demand for
emerging ultra-high-definition applications greatly challenges the design …

Physical Layout after Half a Century: From Back-Board Ordering to Multi-Dimensional Placement and Beyond

  • Kang
    Ilgweon

Innovations and advancements on physical design (PD) in the past half century significantly
contribute to the progresses of modern VLSI designs. While “Moore’s Law” and “Dennard
Scaling” have become slowing down recently, physical design society …

Past, Present and Future of the Research

  • Goto
    Satoshi

SESSION: Optimization and Placement

Interesting Problems in Physical Synthesis

  • Ho
    Pei-Hsin

It is a misperception that the Chinese have the same word for crisis as opportunity.
Despite that, a technical crisis does present opportunities for researchers and practitioners
to solve interesting problems. In this talk we point out two crises: …

Pin Accessibility-Driven Detailed Placement Refinement

  • Ding
    Yixiao

The significantly increased number of routing design rules at sub-20nm nodes has made
pin access one of the most critical challenges in detailed routing. Resolving pin
access issues in detailed routing stage may be too late due to the fixed pin …

A Fast, Robust Network Flow-based Standard-Cell Legalization Method for Minimizing
Maximum Movement

  • Karimpour Darav
    Nima

The standard-cell placement legalization problem has become critical due to increasing
design rule complexity and design utilization at 16nm and lower technology nodes.
An ideal legalization approach should preserve the quality of the input placement
in …

SESSION: FPGA CAD and Contest

CAD Opportunities with Hyper-Pipelining

  • Iyer
    Mahesh A.

Hyper-pipelining is a design technique that results in significant performance and
throughput improvements in latency-insensitive designs. Modern FPGA architectures
like Intel’s Stratix®10 feature a revolutionary register-rich HyperFlex? core fabric

An Effective Timing-Driven Detailed Placement Algorithm for FPGAs

  • Dhar
    Shounak

In this paper, we propose a new timing-driven detailed placement technique for FPGAs
based on optimizing critical paths. Our approach extends well beyond the previously
known critical path optimization approaches and explores a significantly larger …

Clock-Aware FPGA Placement Contest

  • Yang
    Stephen

Modern FPGA device contains complex clocking architecture on top of FPGA logic fabric.
To best utilize FPGA clocking architecture, both FPGA designers and EDA tool developers
need to understand the clocking architecture and design best methodology/…