Middle terminal cell models for efficient over-the-cell routing in high-performance circuits

A new class of cell models called middle terminal models (MTM) is introduced. MTM-based cells allow flexibility in the selection of terminal locations and therefore utilize the over-the-cell (OTC) area more efficiently, as compared to cells based on existing models. For MTM-based designs, two new routers, MTM+V and MTM-V are presented. The first router is suitable for processes that allow vias over-the-cell and is based on an optimal Theta (K) algorithm for terminal row selection for over-the-cell channel routing, where K is the number of cell rows. The second router is suitable for the processes which do not allow vias in over-the-cell areas. This router consists of two key steps. The first step consists of the selection of a maximum planar set of nets for routing in between the terminal rows. For the second step, an optimal algorithm is developed for planar routing between the terminal row and the cell boundary. The experimental results on the PRIMARY I benchmark show that for a two-layer model, MTM-V performs 4.20% better than the best existing routers.<>