Abstract: Methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture are disclosed for a design automation application to evaluate a design automation task using an on-demand computer network. A requesting entity transmits the design automation task, along with a set of data used for testing, to a drop server box provided by the on-demand computer network. The design automation application is configured to process the design automation task and to prevent it from interfering with, or eavesdropping on, other tasks being executed in the on-demand environment and from interfering with the operation of the on-demand environment itself. The design automation application consumes available grid resources to complete the processing task.

Abstract: Computationally efficient methods and systems for optimizing an integrated circuit (IC) design by targeting only a limited subsection of buffer trees in the buffer system for optimization are provided. By making intelligent decisions about which buffer trees to optimize, greater gains in design efficiency (e.g., as measured by reduced delays and/or wire length) may be realized at greatly reduced computational times when compared to conventional techniques that attempt to optimize each buffer tree.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and a computer-readable program for providing generation of graphical congestion images during placement driven synthesis optimization. These graphical congestion images enable a design engineer to make changes and/or improvements to subsequent processes in the design flow before the current placement driven synthesis step completes, thus saving time. This information also provides valuable debug information to PDS developers.

Abstract: An apparatus, program product and method utilize an interactive request server program to interface a plurality of client computers with a timing analysis program. The interactive request server program receives client requests from the plurality of client computers over a network, and, in response to each client request, accesses the timing analysis program to retrieve timing data based upon such client request and thereafter forwards the timing data to the client computer making such request. The interactive request server program may optionally be implemented using a web server program and an application server program, with the web server program interfacing with the client computers via an Internet-type interface, and the application server program interfacing with the timing analysis program using a programmatic interface supported by the timing analysis program.