ICCAD-2012 CAD contest in design hierarchy aware routability-driven placement and benchmark suite

The impact of considering design hierarchy during physical synthesis remains a fairly under-researched area. This is especially true for large-scale circuit placement. This is in large part due to the non-availability of realistic public designs with the design hierarchy information. Additionally, modern designs are fairly complex with numerous placement blockages, non-uniform wiring stacks, partial and/or complete routing blockages, etc. This significantly complicates both, the placement and routing steps of physical synthesis. The aim of the ICCAD-2012 contest is to evaluate the impact of considering design hierarchy on the wire length and routability of placement. This is addressed by way of the following: (a) release industrial-strength place-and-route benchmarks that contain the design hierarchy information, (b) present an accurate congestion analysis framework to evaluate and compare the routability of various placement algorithms. We hope that a set of challenging benchmarks containing the design hierarchy information, along with a standardized evaluation framework, will further advance research in design hierarchy aware routability-driven placement.