With the aid of electronic design automation (EDA) computer-aided design (CAD) tools, it is now possible for engineers to design highly complex digital logic hardware circuits using only high-level circuit descriptions. Such EDA tools include software tools for graphical design input, hardware description language support, simulation, digital logic synthesis, and the creation of configuration (...

The overall goal of VLSI CAD research is to provide the means to produce custom integrated circuits correctly, quickly, and economically. In the past, correctness applied only to the desired function, but there is increasing need to design to a performance specification, expressed in terms of speed, circuit area, and power. In this research group, the main emphasis is on CAD tools for performan...

This paper reviews the current state of the art in circuit optimization, emphasizing techniques suitable for modern microwave CAD. It is directed at the solution of realistic design and modeling problems, addressing such concepts as physical tolerances and model uncertainties. A unified hierarchical treatment of circuit models forms the basis of the presentation. It exposes tolerance phenomena ...

To Perform reliably and consistently over sustained periods of time, large-scale automation critically relies on computer simulation. Simulation allows us supervisory AI to effectively design, validate, continuously improve complex processes, helps practitioners gain insight into the operation justify future investments. While numerous successful applications simulation in industry exist, such ...

An integral challenge in automated synthetic circuit design is to select the optimal set of parts to populate an abstract circuit topology, so that the circuit behavior best approximates the desired one. In some cases, it is also possible to reuse multi-part constructs, or modules that have been already built and experimentally characterized. Efficient part and module matching algorithms are es...

Power has become one of the most important paradigms of design convergence for multi gigahertz communication systems such as optical data links, wireless products, microprocessor & ASIC/SOC designs. POWER consumption has become a bottleneck in microprocessor design. The core of a microprocessor, which includes the largest power density on the microprocessor. In an effort to reduce the power con...

Parallel processing has recently become an extremely attractive and cost effective way of achieving orders of magnitude performance improvements in VLSI CAD applications. In this paper, we propose parallel algorithms to speed up the VLSI circuit extraction task. Given a VLSI layout as input, the problem of circuit extraction consists of determining the circuit connectivity and estimating the va...

In Cu metallization, refractory metal liners at vias generally block electromigration. As liner thicknesses are decreased, fully-blocking liners at vias become less certain due to liner ruptures. We have developed and exercised a reliability CAD tool, SysRel, for circuit-level interconnect reliability assessments, and used it to assess the impact of non-blocking vias on circuit-level reliabilit...

Circuit designers require Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools when compiling designs into Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in order to achieve high quality results due to the complexity of the compilation tasks involved. Technology mapping is one critical step in the FPGA CAD flow. The final mapping result has significant impact on the subsequent steps of clustering, placement and routing, ...