Efficient circuit clustering for area and power reduction in FPGAs

Abstract

We utilize Rent's rule as an empirical measure for efficient clustering and placement of circuits in clustered Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). We show that careful matching of resource availability and design complexity during the clustering and placement processes can contribute to spatial uniformity in the placed design, leading to overall device decongestion after routing. We present experimental results to show that appropriate logic depopulation during clustering can have a positive impact on the overall FPGA device area. Our clustering and placement techniques can improve the overall device routing area by as much as 62%, 35% on average, for the same array size, when compared to state-of-the-art FPGA clustering, placement, and routing tools. Power dissipation simulations using a typical buffered pass-transistor-based FPGA interconnect model are also presented. They show that our clustering and placement techniques can reduce the overall device power dissipation by approximately 13%.