Abstract: Methods and apparatuses are described for facilitating a user to explore and evaluate different options during floorplanning. Some embodiments display a graphical representation of a circuit design floorplan, wherein the graphical representation includes a set of blocks and a set of flylines between blocks, wherein each block corresponds to a portion of the circuit design, and wherein each flyline corresponds to one or more relationships between two blocks. Additionally, a set of metrics associated with one or more blocks or one or more flylines can be displayed. Next, in response to receiving a modification to one or more blocks in the graphical representation, the embodiments can update the set of metrics without performing expensive netlist modification, placement, routing, and/or propagation of timing information through multiple levels of logic, and then display the updated set of metrics.

Abstract: Methods and apparatuses are described for facilitating a user to explore and evaluate different options during floorplanning. Some embodiments display a graphical representation of a circuit design floorplan, wherein the graphical representation includes a set of blocks and a set of flylines between blocks, wherein each block corresponds to a portion of the circuit design, and wherein each flyline corresponds to one or more relationships between two blocks. Additionally, a set of metrics associated with one or more blocks or one or more flylines can be displayed. Next, in response to receiving a modification to one or more blocks in the graphical representation, the embodiments can update the set of metrics without performing expensive netlist modification, placement, routing, and/or propagation of timing information through multiple levels of logic, and then display the updated set of metrics.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and method for concurrently performing analysis and optimization of an integrated circuit (IC) design in multiple scenarios. The system is based on a distributed computing model, where any optimization change introduced in one scenario is immediately tested in all other scenarios. This ensures that modifications made to the design do not affect other scenarios. The invention significantly reduces the execution time of the optimization and signoff flows in the design of ICs. In addition, the computing means required for simultaneously testing multiple scenarios are standard and affordable.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and method for accelerating the resistance and capacitance (RC) extraction process by performing parallel and distributed processing. The method includes the dividing of a given integrated circuit (IC) design into a limited number of non-overlapping tile blocks, distributing tile blocks to standard RC extraction tools, and processing all tiles in parallel by these tools. A tile block includes all information for performing accurate RC extraction. Thereafter, resulting parasitic RC information is assembled to form a complete parasitic RC model for the entire IC.