This book describes new and effective methodologies for modeling, analyzing and mitigating cell-internal signal electromigration in nanoCMOS, with significant circuit lifetime improvements and no impact on performance, area and power. The authors are the first to analyze and propose a solution for the electromigration effects inside logic cells of a circuit. They show in this book that an interconnect inside a cell can fail reducing considerably the circuit lifetime and they demonstrate a methodology to optimize the lifetime of circuits, by placing the output, Vdd and Vss pin of the cells in the less critical regions, where the electromigration effects are reduced. Readers will be enabled to apply this methodology only for the critical cells in the circuit, avoiding impact in the circuit delay, area and performance, thus increasing the lifetime of the circuit without loss in other characteristics.

This book serves both as an introduction to computer architecture and as a guide to using a hardware description language (HDL) to design, model and simulate real digital systems. The book starts with an introduction to Verilog - the HDL chosen for the book since it is widely used in industry and straightforward to learn. Next, the instruction set architecture (ISA) for the simple VeSPA (Very Small Processor Architecture) processor is defined - this is a real working device that has been built and tested at the University of Minnesota by the authors. The VeSPA ISA is used throughout the remainder of the book to demonstrate how behavioural and structural models can be developed and intermingled in Verilog. Although Verilog is used throughout, the lessons learned will be equally applicable to other HDLs. Written for senior and graduate students, this book is also an ideal introduction to Verilog for practising engineers.

The physical design flow of any project depends upon the size of the design, the technology, the number of designers, the clock frequency, and the time to do the design. As technology advances and design-styles change, physical design flows are constantly reinvented as traditional phases are removed and new ones are added to accommodate changes in technology. Handbook of Algorithms for Physical Design Automation provides a detailed overview of VLSI physical design automation, emphasizing state-of-the-art techniques, trends and improvements that have emerged during the previous decade. After a brief introduction to the modern physical design problem, basic algorithmic techniques, and partitioning, the book discusses significant advances in floorplanning representations and describes recent formulations of the floorplanning problem. The text also addresses issues of placement, net layout and optimization, routing multiple signal nets, manufacturability, physical synthesis, special nets, and designing for specialized technologies. It includes a personal perspective from Ralph Otten as he looks back on the major technical milestones in the history of physical design automation. Although several books on this topic are currently available, most are either too broad or out of date. Alternatively, proceedings and journal articles are valuable resources for researchers in this area, but the material is widely dispersed in the literature. This handbook pulls together a broad variety of perspectives on the most challenging problems in the field, and focuses on emerging problems and research results.

This book serves both as an introduction to computer architecture and as a guide to using a hardware description language (HDL) to design, model and simulate real digital systems. The book starts with an introduction to Verilog - the HDL chosen for the book since it is widely used in industry and straightforward to learn. Next, the instruction set architecture (ISA) for the simple VeSPA (Very Small Processor Architecture) processor is defined - this is a real working device that has been built and tested at the University of Minnesota by the authors. The VeSPA ISA is used throughout the remainder of the book to demonstrate how behavioural and structural models can be developed and intermingled in Verilog. Although Verilog is used throughout, the lessons learned will be equally applicable to other HDLs. Written for senior and graduate students, this book is also an ideal introduction to Verilog for practising engineers.