Integrated floorplanning with buffer/channel insertion for bus-based designs

A new approach to the interconnect-driven floorplanning problem integrates bus planning and is intended for bus-based designs where each bus consists of a large number of wires. The floorplanner optimizes the timing and ensures routability by generating the exact location and shape of interconnects above and between the circuit blocks. Experiments with Microelectronics Center of North Carolina benchmarks clearly show the advantage of integrated floorplanning over the classical floorplan-analysis-and-thenrefloorplan approach. Our floorplans are routable, meet all timing constraints, and are on average 12%-13% smaller in area as compared to traditional floorplanning algorithms.