4.1. Introduction

In this chapter, we discuss the physical design that is commonly called “back-end” design. Regardless of the type of IC design you have, your physical design techniques apply to both traditional ASICs and modern SOCs. The same basic principles and techniques are applied for floorplanning, placement, routing, physical verification, timing optimization, etc. How you plan for your physical design in advance is the key to a successful physical design.

We assume that the reader is familiar with the basic concepts of physical design. Therefore, we concentrate on the modern design techniques and cover some tips and guidelines for hierarchical physical design.

Section 4.2 reviews the physical design flow. Here, we review the basics of floorplanning, place and route, clock-tree implementation, timing optimization, and physical verification.

Section 4.3 introduces some tips and guidelines for hierarchical designs.

Section 4.4 covers two examples of modern physical design techniques.