Detailed and precise hierarchical design planning is essential to achieving closure on large designs. In this article we describe a new hierarchical design flow and its usage on a 3 million-gate chip.

Tsukuba, Japan—Hierarchical structures, including organizational structures and computer networks, are mathematically represented as "rooted trees" that connect related nodes with edges. These can be ...

In IC physical design, there is a tendency to focus on the synthesis and layout tasks, and to not give much consideration to the chip finishing tasks, at least not until the more pressing matters of ...