IC Design Support Program for Automatic Wiring Area Determination
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional automatic wiring technologies for printed circuit boards face challenges in determining the minimally required wiring area, leading to unwired signal lines and increased design time and costs due to congestion differences based on the order of bus wiring and elements on the board.
Innovation Solution
A computer-readable medium stores a design support program that performs tentative wiring processing between terminal groups, detecting unwired nets, updating the tentative wiring area based on detected unwired nets, and determining the area as the wiring area if no nets are detected, ensuring efficient wiring design without unwired signals.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If the wiring area is determined based on pre-established net paths and overlapping consideration, then the wiring area determination is simplified, but unwired nets occur due to congestion differences based on bus wiring order
Solution Approach 1:
The invention performs preliminary tentative wiring processing before finalizing the wiring area determination. By executing tentative wiring in advance and detecting unwired nets at this stage, the system can identify potential wiring failures before actual wiring, allowing for area expansion to prevent these failures. This preliminary action resolves the contradiction by adding a verification step that ensures wiring completion without overly complicating the overall process.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention implements a feedback mechanism where the results of tentative wiring (detected unwired nets) are used to adjust the wiring area. The system detects unwired nets consequent to tentative wiring, then expands the wiring area based on this feedback, and repeats the tentative wiring process. This iterative feedback loop ensures that the final wiring area is sufficient to accommodate all nets, resolving the reliability issue while maintaining a systematic approach to area determination.
2Reliability
If the wiring area is expanded to accommodate all possible nets, then unwired nets are prevented, but design time and costs increase due to unnecessary area expansion
Solution Approach 1:
The invention applies partial action by expanding the wiring area only to the extent necessary to resolve detected unwired nets, rather than uniformly expanding the entire wiring area. The area expansion is proportional to the number of unwired nets detected, allowing the system to achieve wiring completion while minimizing unnecessary area expansion and associated design time losses.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention makes the wiring area dynamic rather than static. The wiring area is initially set to a minimal value, then dynamically expanded based on the actual needs revealed during tentative wiring and net detection. This dynamic adjustment allows the system to achieve wiring completion while avoiding excessive area allocation, thereby reducing design time and costs.
3Reliability
If tentative wiring processing is executed repeatedly with area expansion, then wiring completion is ensured, but the processing complexity and time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The invention uses feedback to control the repetition of tentative wiring processing. Each iteration of tentative wiring is followed by net detection, and the results feed back into area expansion decisions. The process is structured to terminate when no unwired nets are detected, ensuring wiring completion while providing a clear termination condition that prevents infinite loops and excessive processing time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs self-service by automatically detecting unwired nets and determining the necessary area expansion without requiring manual intervention. The iterative process is autonomously controlled based on detection results, allowing the system to resolve wiring issues efficiently without external assistance, thereby maintaining productivity despite the repeated processing.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer-readable, non-transitory medium stores therein a design support program that causes a computer executing tentative wiring processing between a first terminal group and a second terminal group in a tentative wiring area to execute a process. The process includes detecting unwired nets occurring in the tentative wiring area consequent to the tentative wiring processing; updating the tentative wiring area by expanding the tentative wiring area according to the number of unwired nets, if any unwired nets are detected at the detecting; controlling to execute the tentative wiring processing and the subsequent detecting with respect to the tentative wiring area updated at the updating; and determining the tentative wiring area to be a wiring area if no unwired nets are detected at the detecting.