1 Introduction. - 1. 1 How PI Lays Out a Chip: An Example. - 2 Preliminaries. - 2. 1 Specifications for the PI System. - 2. 2 Terminology. - 3 The Placement Framework. - 3. 1 Overview of PI's Placement Heuristics. - 3. 2 PI's Placement Problem. - 3. 3 The Placement Tree. - 3. 4 How PI Refines the Placement Tree. - 4 Chip Estimation and Pad Placement. - 4. 1 Estimating Chip Size and Shape. - 4. 2 Pad Placement. - 5 Logic Placement. - 5. 1 Top-Down Mincut Partitioning. - 5. 2 Module Orientation. - 5. 3 Bottom-Up Hardening. - 5. 4 Additional Placement Heuristics. - 5. 5 Open Placement Problems. - 6 Power-Ground Routing. - 6. 1 Overview of Power-Ground Routing. - 6. 2 The Hamiltonian Circuit Heuristic. - 6. 3 Calculating Current Requirements. - 7 Signal Routing. - 7. 1 Overview of Signal Routing. - 7. 2 Channel Definition. - 7. 3 Global Routing. - 7. 4 Crossing Placement. - 7. 5 Channel Routing. - 8 Resizing. - 8. 1 Overview of Resizing. - 8. 2 Gathering the Constraints. - 8. 3 Solving the Constraint Graphs. - 8. 4 How PI Converges on a Solution. - 9 The MIT Implementation of PI. - 9. 1 Objectives. - 9. 2 Major Design Decisions. - 9. 3 Critique. - 9. 4 Source Code Contributors and Documentation. - 10 Related Layout Systems. - 10. 1 2PI at General Electric. - 10. 2 EC-PI at the Technion. - 10. 3 Selected Other Layout Systems. - 11 Conclusion. - Basic Sources. - Mathematics and Computer Science. - VLSI Theory. - Placement. - Routing. - Compaction. - The PI System. - Other Placement and Routing Systems. - Layouts of Specific Circuits. - Other Works. Language: English