FastYield: Variation-Aware, Layout-Driven Simultaneous Binding and Module Selection for Performance Yield Optimization

Lucas, Gregory; Cromar, Scott A.; Chen, Deming

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/9763 Copy

Description

Title

FastYield: Variation-Aware, Layout-Driven Simultaneous Binding and Module Selection for Performance Yield Optimization

Author(s)

• Lucas, Gregory
• Cromar, Scott A.
• Chen, Deming

Issue Date

2009-01

Keyword(s)

• high-level synthesis
• behavioral synthesis
• performance yield
• high-level binding
• variation-aware
• process variation

Abstract

While technology scaling has presented many new and exciting opportunities, new design challenges have arisen due to increased density, and delay and power variations. High level synthesis has been touted as a solution to these problems, as it can significantly reduce the number of man hours required for a design by raising the level of abstraction. In this paper, we propose a new variation-aware high-level synthesis binding/module selection algorithm, named FastYield, which takes into consideration multiplexers, functional units, registers, and interconnects. Additionally, FastYield connects with the lower levels of the design hierarchy through its inclusion of a timing driven floorplanner guided by a statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) engine which is used to modify/enhance the synthesis solution. FastYield is able to incorporate spatial correlations of process variations in its optimization, which are shown to affect performance yield. On average, FastYield achieves a clock period that is 14.5% smaller, and a performance yield gain of 78.9%, when compared to a variation-unaware algorithm. By making use of accurate timing information, FastYield’s rebinding improves performance yield by an average of 9.8% over the initial binding, for the same clock period. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first high-level synthesis binding/module selection algorithm that is layout-driven and variation aware.

Publisher

IEEE

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/9763

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