A routing algorithm for FPGAs with time-multiplexed interconnects

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies show that interconnects occupy a large portion of the timing budget and area in FPGAs. In this work, we propose a time-multiplexing technique on FPGA interconnects. In order to fully exploit this interconnect architecture, we propose a time-multiplexed routing algorithm that can actively identify qualified nets and schedule them to multiplexable wires. We validate the algorithm by using the router to implement 20 benchmark circuits to time-multiplexed FPGAs. We achieve a 38% smaller minimum channel width and 3.8% smaller circuit critical path delay compared with the state-of-the-art architecture router when a wire can be time-multiplexed six times in a cycle.