Frequency driven repeater insertion for deep submicron

Repeaters now widely used to decrease delay and increase the performance of long interconnects. The maximum operating frequency is limited by the longest wire between two repeaters. The main goal of repeater insertion is to reduce the delay of the interconnects in a circuit. Increasing the number of repeaters on an interconnect increases the slew rate and the operating frequency but decreases the design performance in terms of area and power. This paper presents a new methodology of repeater insertion considering the circuit operating frequency to improve the slew rate and reduce the area overhead of the repeaters. We propose a mathematical treatment for finding the number and position of repeaters while keeping the same size of the optimal repeater size. Experimental results are shown for different frequencies and repeater sizes to indicate the improvements of slew rate and saving area overheard.