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arXiv · 2105.10410

Multi-objective Optimisation of Digital Circuits based on Cell Mapping in an Industrial EDA Flow

Linan Cao·Simon J. Bale·Martin A. Trefzer
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Abstract

Modern electronic design automation (EDA) tools can handle the complexity of state-of-the-art electronic systems by decomposing them into smaller blocks or cells, introducing different levels of abstraction and staged design flows. However, throughout each independent-optimised design step, overhead and inefficiency can accumulate in the resulting overall design. Performing design-specific optimisation from a more global viewpoint requires more time due to the larger search space, but has the potential to provide solutions with improved performance. In this work, a fully-automated, multi-objective (MO) EDA flow is introduced to address this issue. It specifically tunes drive strength mapping, preceding physical implementation, through multi-objective population-based search algorithms. Designs are evaluated with respect to their power, performance and area (PPA). The proposed approach is aimed at digital circuit optimisation at the block-level, where it is capable of expanding the design space and offers a set of trade-off solutions for different case-specific utilisation. We have applied the proposed MOEDA framework to ISCAS-85 and EPFL benchmark circuits using a commercial 65nm standard cell library. The experimental results demonstrate how the MOEDA flow enhances the solutions initially generated by the standard digital flow, and how simultaneously a significant improvement in PPA metrics is achieved.

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Linan Cao, Simon J. Bale, Martin A. Trefzer. 2021-05-21. Multi-objective Optimisation of Digital Circuits based on Cell Mapping in an Industrial EDA Flow. https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10410

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