Recent developments in performance driven Steiner routing: an overview

Abstract

The contribution of interconnect delay to the stage delay of a circuit is increasing with scaling of the minimum feature size. At larger feature size the interconnect delay contribution was small and the driver resistance was very large compared to wire resistance. Consequently, a simple lumped model was sufficient for evaluating and optimizing circuit delay. However, with sub-micron processes, the contribution of interconnect delay dominates the stage delay and the wire resistance becomes noticeable, making the interconnect delay dependent on the routing topology. Hence it is becoming necessary to use a more accurate model for estimating and optimizing interconnect delay. This paper surveys the recent advancements in techniques for generating on-chip interconnect topology for optimizing circuit performance.