Mixed-Cell-Height Legalization on CPU-GPU Heterogeneous Systems

Abstract

Legalization conducts refinements on post-globalplacement cell location to compromise design constraints and parameters. These include placement fence regions, power/ground rail alignments, timing, wire length and etc. In advanced technology nodes, designs can easily contain millions of mutiple-row standard cells, which challenges the scalability of modern legalization algorithms. In this paper, for the first time, we investigate dedicated legalization algorithms on heterogeneous platforms, which promises intelligent usage of CPU and GPU resources and hence provides new algorithm design methodologies for large scale physical design problems. Experimental results on IC/CAD 2017 and ISPD 2015 contest benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, compared to the state-of-the-art legalization solution for mixedcell-height designs.