Using genetic algorithms for planning of ASIC chip-design project flows

Because of constantly improving technologies, the complexity of Integrated Circuits is continuously increasing. Consequently chip-design becomes more and more challenging. Therefore an approach that allows a fast and efficient application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design is needed. Especially the organization of Chip-Design projects exhibits a very high complexity. Different tools can be used to execute the same task, resulting in a huge number of different possible design flows. The number of valid flows is delimited by different constraints. Resources are limited and different types of design tasks require different types of resources. Precedences between design tasks have to be considered. Because of these characteristics we developed an approach that uses a genetic algorithm to analyse and improve the organization of ASIC design projects.