Detailed Routing Architecture

In this chapter we explore a series of detailed routing architectures to find which ones lead to the best FPGA area and speed [14]. The detailed routing architecture of an FPGA specifies the length of every wire in the FPGA, the type of switch used to make every connection, the switch block topology, the metal width and spacing of each routing wire, and several other related parameters. In the next section we more precisely define all the parameters determining an FPGA’s detailed routing architecture, and explain why detailed routing architecture issues are so crucial in FPGA design. Section 7.2 then describes the experimental flow we use to evaluate different routing architectures.