8.5 Summary
The incorporation of constructive placement algorithms in logic synthesis flows has resulted in a shift in focus for EDA vendors providing placement tools. Iterative optimization and legalization of the initial physical location cell assignment from synthesis requires judicious selection of candidate cells for re-positioning, with fast and accurate evaluation of interconnect parasitic estimates. This focus on estimation efficiency is required to support an increasing number of cell instances in a design block. In addition, tools are applying a richer set of designer input constraints to direct the resulting cell placement to a solution optimized for routability, path timing closure, and power dissipation reduction. Increasingly, physical implementation design resources for an SoC project are being re-directed from executing cell placement to addressing the complexities of interconnect routing optimizations for electrical and reliability analysis flows, such as timing, power, noise, and electromigration. Nevertheless, the quality of results for the cell placement flow is crucial to achieving subsequent design closure in routing.