A global routing application for VLSI design
There are two versions of the routing code, each located within its own directory. The multi-threaded version is located in the MT/ directory, while the path-saving, single-threaded version is located in the MEM/ directory. To compile either, cd to the directory and type:
make
After compilation, there will be four executable files located in the MT/build/ and five executable files in the MEM/build directory:
MT/route_MT : approximately solves LP relaxation to the ILP global routing formulation (multi-threaded, no path-saving)
MEM/route : approximately solves LP relaxation to the ILP global routing formulation (single-threaded, path-saving)
MEM/route_MT: approximately solves LP relaxation to the ILP global routing formulation (multi-threaded, path-saving)
frac_round_MRD : performs randomized rounding to solution produced by route_MT
prune_yal : format YAL benchmark files
prune_ibm : format IBM benchmark files
Once compiled, the program should be executed as follows:
route_MT bench.txt args.txt
where bench.txt is the text file containing the instance of the problem and args.txt is the argument file. For a sample argument file, see ARGS_EX.txt.
To round the solution, type:
frac_round_MRD trees.txt stats.txt sol.txt [time]
where trees.txt are the trees computed by route_MT, stats.txt is the statistics file produced by route_MT, sol.txt is the integer solution file to be written, and an optional integer representing the number of minutes spent in rounding. If no time is specified, rounding will continue until the program is halted manually.
The files prune_yal and prune_ibm are used to format the input files to route_MT. These programs remove unnecessary nets from the instance that do not need to be dealt with in the global routing phase (repeated terminal nets, 1 terminal nets). Example:
prune_ibm in.txt out.txt [tol]
where in.txt is the original benchmark, out.txt is the formatted benchmark and the optional integer tol is the maximum number of terminals allowed in a net. (i.e./ tol of 9 will only write nets with less than 10 terminals to the output file)
A visualization MATLAB extension has been provided to produce animations of the algorithm in action. The code will produce files with the name Congestion_xx.txt in the build/output/ directory. To produce the animations, copy these files to the VIZ/ directory, open MATLAB, cd to the VIZ/ directory and type:
grid_movie('Congestion', N, 'movie.avi', gw, gh, fps);
where 'Congestion' is the prefix of the files in the output/ directory, N is the number of iterations performed by route or route_MT, gw and gh represent the width and height of the grid graph respectively, and fps is the number of frames per second for the file movie.avi.
binheap.h : header file for a binary heap min-priority queue
binheap.c : implementation for a binary heap min-priority queue
fatal.h : error handling
frac_round_MRD.c : main file for rounding program
frac_round_aux.c : auxilliary functions for frac_round_MRD
globals.MT.c : initialization routines for global variables used in main.MT.c
globals.c : initialization routines for global variables use in main.c
graph.h : header file for graphs
graph.c : implementation of graphs
graphtype.h : header file for structured graphs (virtual layer, grid)
graphtype.c : intialization routines for structured graphs
hash.h : header file for hash tables (unused)
hash.c : implementation of hash tables (unused)
helper.h : auxilliary routines
helper.c : auxilliary routines
linesearch.h : header file for line search and potential function evaluations
linesearch.c : implementation of line search and potential function evaluations
list.h : header file for linked lists
list.c : implementation of linked lists
main.MT.c : implementation of MEM/route_MT
main.c : implementation of route
main.ecmm.c : implementation of edge congestion minimization model route_ECMM (unused)
mst.h : header file for computing minimum spanning trees
mst.c : implementation of prims algorithm for computing MST's
parseargs.h : header file for parsing command line arguments (symbol table)
parseargs.c : implementation of parser
prune_ibm.c : main file for prune_ibm
prune_yal.c : main file for prune_yal
rounding.h : header file for randomized rounding
rounding.c : implementation of randomized rounding
routing.h : header file for routing specific code (nets, parsing benchmarks, etc)
routing.c : implementation of routing specific code
set.h : header file for ADT-Set
set.c : implementation of ADT-Set
shortest.MT.h : header file for computing shortest paths in MEM/route_MT
shortest.MT.c : implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm for computing shortest paths in MEM/route_MT
shortest.h : header file for computing shortest paths in route
shortest.c : implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm for computing shortests paths in route
steiner.MT.h : header file for computing Steiner trees in route_MT
steiner.MT.c : implementation for computing Steiner trees in route_MT
steiner.h : header file for computing Steiner trees in route
steiner.c : implementation for computing Steiner trees in route
C. Dickson, Global Routing in VLSI: Algorithms, Theory, and Computation, Masters Thesis, Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, 2007.
-CD 06/2007