This paper presents a diagonal routing method which is applied to an actual microprocessor prototype chip. While including the layout functions for the conventional Manhattan routing with horizontal and vertical directions, a new diagonal routing capability is added as one of the routing functions. With this enhancement, diagonal routing becomes an additional strategy for improving delays of critical paths in the microprocessor design. This method was applied to the prototype chip of the Fujitsu SPARC64 microprocessor with two CPU cores using 90nm process technology. By applying the diagonal routing to long distance nets, net length is reduced by 36% per net on average. When the diagonal routing is applied to a critical path, path delay is improved by as much as about 14 pico-seconds per net on a path. This improvement is more than the delay of a gate with no load. This prototype chip proved that our method was effective in reducing the total net length and improving path delays.

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Cited By

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SHINODA KKOHIRA YTAKAHASHI A(2011)Single-Layer Trunk Routing Using Minimal 45-Degree LinesIEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences10.1587/transfun.E94.A.2510E94-A:12(2510-2518)Online publication date: 2011
https://doi.org/10.1587/transfun.E94.A.2510

Index Terms

Diagonal routing in high performance microprocessor design
1. Hardware
2. Theory of computation
  1. Design and analysis of algorithms
    1. Approximation algorithms analysis
      1. Routing and network design problems

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ASP-DAC '06: Proceedings of the 2006 Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference

January 2006

998 pages

ISBN:0780394518

General Chair:
Fumiyasu Hirose
Cadence Design Systems, Japan

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IEEE Press

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Published: 24 January 2006

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SHINODA KKOHIRA YTAKAHASHI A(2011)Single-Layer Trunk Routing Using Minimal 45-Degree LinesIEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences10.1587/transfun.E94.A.2510E94-A:12(2510-2518)Online publication date: 2011
https://doi.org/10.1587/transfun.E94.A.2510

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