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Statistical Analysis and Process Variation-Aware Routing and Skew Assignment for FPGAs

Published: 17 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

With constant scaling of process technologies, chip design is becoming increasingly difficult due to process variations. The FPGA community has only recently started focusing on the effects of variations. In this work we present a statistical analysis to compare the effects of variations on designs mapped to FPGAs and ASICs. We also present CAD and architecture techniques to mitigate the impact of variations. First we present a variation-aware router that optimizes statistical criticality. We then propose a modification to the clock network to deliver programmable skews to different flip-flops. Finally, we combine the two techniques and the result is a 9x reduction in yield loss that translates to a 12% improvement in timing yield. When the desired timing yield is set to 99%, our combined statistical routing and skew assignment technique results in a delay improvement of about 10% over a purely deterministic approach.

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  • (2015)Robust Optimization of Multiple Timing ConstraintsIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2015.244031634:12(1942-1953)Online publication date: Dec-2015
  • (2014)A Framework for Supporting Adaptive Fault-Tolerant SolutionsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/262947313:5s(1-22)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2014
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    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems
    ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems  Volume 1, Issue 1
    Special edition on the 15th international symposium on FPGAs
    March 2008
    139 pages
    ISSN:1936-7406
    EISSN:1936-7414
    DOI:10.1145/1331897
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 17 March 2008
    Accepted: 01 December 2007
    Revised: 01 October 2007
    Received: 01 May 2007
    Published in TRETS Volume 1, Issue 1

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    Author Tags

    1. Statistical timing analysis
    2. routing
    3. skew assignment

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    • (2016)A framework for exploring alternative fault-tolerant schemes targeting 3-D reconfigurable architectures2016 International Conference on Embedded Computer Systems: Architectures, Modeling and Simulation (SAMOS)10.1109/SAMOS.2016.7818369(336-341)Online publication date: Jul-2016
    • (2015)Robust Optimization of Multiple Timing ConstraintsIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2015.244031634:12(1942-1953)Online publication date: Dec-2015
    • (2014)A Framework for Supporting Adaptive Fault-Tolerant SolutionsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/262947313:5s(1-22)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2014
    • (2014)IMPROVED DELAY AND PROCESS VARIATION TOLERANT CLOCK TREE NETWORK IN ULTRA-LARGE CIRCUITS USING HYBRID RF/METAL CLOCK ROUTINGJournal of Circuits, Systems and Computers10.1142/S021812661450050923:04(1450050)Online publication date: Apr-2014
    • (2014)Asynchronously assisted FPGA for variability2014 24th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL)10.1109/FPL.2014.6927398(1-4)Online publication date: Sep-2014
    • (2014)Variability-tolerant routing algorithms for Networks-on-ChipMicroprocessors & Microsystems10.1016/j.micpro.2014.08.00238:8(1037-1045)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2014
    • (2012)A low-cost fault tolerant solution targeting to commercial FPGA devices2012 NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS)10.1109/AHS.2012.6268668(46-53)Online publication date: Jun-2012
    • (2011)Variation Tolerant AFPGA ArchitectureProceedings of the 2011 17th IEEE International Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems10.1109/ASYNC.2011.17(77-86)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2011
    • (2010)Variation-aware placement for FPGAs with multi-cycle statistical timing analysisProceedings of the 18th annual ACM/SIGDA international symposium on Field programmable gate arrays10.1145/1723112.1723143(177-180)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2010
    • (2010)Variation-aware placement with multi-cycle statistical timing analysis for FPGAsIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2010.205641129:11(1818-1822)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2010
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