APWL-Y: An accurate and efficient wirelength estimation technique for hexagon/triangle placement

The Y architecture has recently received much attention due to its many potential advantages, such as substantially reduced wirelength, power consumption and significantly improved throughput. To fully utilize the virtues of Y architecture, several hexagon/triangle placement (HTP) algorithms suitable for the Y architecture were presented, however the wirelength optimization is not included in the algorithms. Wirelength estimation is fundamental to guide the wirelength optimization process in early design stages. In this paper, we present an accurate and efficient wirelength estimation technique called APWL-Y appropriate for the Y architecture, and especially for HTP floorplanner and placer. The average error of APWL-Y is 4.41% for 1.57 million nets from industrial circuits. When developing APWL-Y, we find out that 3-SMT wirelength is a power function of aspect ratio of bounding box of the given n-pin nets. The time complexity of APWL-Y is O(n). APWL-Y is very effective to guide the wirelength optimization in a HTP placer. Moreover, we develop an efficient HTP algorithm with wirelength optimization driven by APWL-Y estimator. The placement results by our placer subject to different optimization objectives are presented. Compared to the HTP placer with only area optimization, our placer can reduce the wirelength by 54.3% with a small area overhead of 9.07% on average. In addition, we explore the HPWL technique in the Y architecture. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first in-depth study on wirelength estimation technique in Y architecture and HTP floorplanning optimization with consideration of interconnects.