GSRC  Bookshelf (see other slots )

ISPD02 IBM-MS Mixed-size Placement Benchmarks

Saurabh Adya , Igor Markov

Contents

I.  Introduction 
II.  Structure of the Benchmarks
III. The Benchmarks

IV
Literature


I. Introduction

This slot includes mixed-size placement benchmarks for CAD research. The newer IBM-MSwPins mixed-size benchmarks with non-trivial cell/macro pin-locations and non-trivial macro aspect ratios are available here .


II. Structure of the Benchmarks

These benchmarks have large placeable macros and many fixed pads distributed through the periphery. The benchmarks are derived from the ISPD-98 (IBM) circuit benchmarks. We converted the netlists into the Bookshelf placement format and added placement-related information. The original descriptions specify cell areas, but not their dimensions.  We define rows of height 16. Cell sites in all rows have width 1. Cell widths were computed by dividing cell areas by row height (16). When the width of a cell exceeded a threshold, we upgraded such a cell to the status of a multi-row macro with aspect ratio 1. The height of such a macro is computed by rounding the square-root of the area to the closest integer multiple of row height (16). The width is computed by dividing cell area by cell height and rounding the result to the closest integer number of cell sites. All designs have a whitespace of 20% and their pads (marked in the original IBM netlists) were randomly placed near the perimeter of the core area. Recently, IBM-MSwPins benchmarks , an improved version of these original IBM mixed-size placement were released in ICCAD 2004. The IBM-MSwPins benchmarks are different from these IBM-MS benchmarks because the macros have non-trivial aspect ratios between 0.5 to 2.0 and the pins of all cells and macros are spread around the boundaries of respective cell/macro.


III. The Benchmarks
Disclaimer: If you are using these benchmarks in a publication or a technical report, please cite the following sources [1] and [2] in addition to the URL. They describe how the benchmarks were created.

There are 18 benchmarks, ibm01-ibm18, available in Bookshelf format and LEF/DEF format.

ibmISPD02Bench_Bookshelf.tar.gz (Boofshelf format)

ibmISPD02Bench_LEFDEF.tar.gz   (LEF/DEF format)


IV. Literature

[1] S. N. Adya, I. L. Markov, "Consistent Placement of Macro-Blocks using Floorplanning and Standard-Cell Placement", International Symposium of Physical Design (ISPD), San Diego,2002.

[2] S. N. Adya, I. L. Markov, "Combinatorial Techniques for Mixed-size Placement", to appear in ACM Trans. on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, 2004

[3] S. N. Adya, I. L. Markov, "Fixed Outline Floorplanning Through Better Local Search", International Conference of Computer Design (ICCD), Austin, USA, September 2001.