Research in Physical Design of VLSI

为了设计和制造下一代复杂的VLSI芯片，该项目探索了集成电路和系统物理设计的新技术。该项目的重点是(1)开发互连规划算法，这些算法对于设计范式从以门为中心的方法向以互连为中心的方法的转变至关重要；(2)开发使用传输线延迟模型的电路优化方法，其结果比基于通常使用的集中电路模型的算法更准确；(3)开发能够预测芯片制造中光刻工艺引入的误差的物理设计算法；以及(4)开发适用于现场可编程芯片的超快布线技术，该技术适用于需要实时布线的可重构计算。

In order to design and manufacture future generations of complex VLSI chips, this project explores new techniques for the physical design of integrated circuits and systems. This project focuses on (1) the development of interconnect planning algorithms that are essential to the change in design paradigm from gate-centric approach to interconnect-centric approach, (2) the development of circuit optimization methods using the transmission line delay model which give more accurate results than algorithms based upon the commonly used lumped circuit models, (3) the development of physical design algorithms which can anticipate errors to be introduced by the photo-lithography process in chip manufacturing, and (4) the development of ultra-fast routing techniques for field-programmable chips suitable to be used in reconfigurable computing where "on-the-fly" routing is needed in real-time.