Efficient Hierarchical Algorithm for Mixed Mode Placement in Three Dimensional Integrated Circuit Chip Designs

Hierarchical art was used to solve the mixed mode placement for three dimensional (3-D) integrated circuit design. The 3-D placement flow stream includes hierarchical clustering, hierarchical 3-D floorplanning, vertical via mapping, and recursive two dimensional (2-D) global/detailed placement phases. With state-of-the-art clustering and de-clustering phases, the design complexity was reduced to enhance the placement algorithm efficiency and capacity. The 3-D floorplanning phase solved the layer assignment problem and controlled the number of vertical vias. The vertical via mapping transformed the 3-D placement problem to a set of 2-D placement sub-problems, which not only simplifies the original 3-D placement problem, but also generates the vertical via assignment solution for the routing phase. The design optimizes both the wire length and the thermal load in the floorplan and placement phases to improve the performance and reliability of 3-D integrate circuits. Experiments on IBM benchmarks show that the total wire length is reduced from 15% to 35% relative to 2-D placement with two to four stacked layers, with the number of vertical vias minimized to satisfy a pre-defined upper bound constraint. The maximum temperature is reduced by 16% with two-stage optimization on four stacked layers.