High-Definition Routing Congestion Prediction for Large-Scale FPGAs

To speed up the FPGA placement and routing closure, we propose a novel approach to predict the routing congestion map for large-scale FPGA designs at the placement stage. After reformulating the problem into an image translation task, our proposed approach leverages recent advancement in generative adversarial learning to address the task. Particularly, state-of-the-art generative adversarial networks for high-resolution image translation are used along with well-engineered features extracted from the placement stage. Unlike available approaches, our novel framework demonstrates a capability of handling large-scale FPGA designs. With its superior accuracy, our proposed approach can be incorporated into the placement engine to provide congestion prediction resulting in up to 7% reduction in routed wirelength for the most congested design in ISPD 2016 benchmark.