1288514
Generation of universal series-parallel Boolean functions
The structural tree-based mapping algorithm is an efficient and popular technique for technology mapping. In order to make good use of this mapping technique in FTGA design, it is desirable to design FPGA logic modules based on Boolan functions which can be represented by a tree of gates (i.e., series-parallel or SP functions). Thakur and Wong [1996a; 1996b] studied this issue and they demonstrated the advantages of designing logic modules as universal SP functions, that is, SP functions which can implement all SP functions with a certain number of inputs. The number of variables in the universal function corresponds to the number of inputs to the FPGA module, so it is desirable to have as few variables as possible in the constructed functions. The universal SP functions presented in  Thakur and Wong [1996a; 1966b] were designed manually. Recently, there is an algorithm that can generate these functions automatically [Young and Wong 1997], but the number of variables in the generated functions grows exponentially. In this paper, we present an algorithm to generate, for each <italic>n</italic> > 0, a universal SP function <italic>f<subscrpt>n</subscrpt></italic> for implementing all SP functions with <italic>n</italic> inputs or less. The number of variables in <italic>f<subscrpt>n</subscrpt></italic> is less than <italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2.376</supscrpt> and the constructions are the smallest possible when <italic>n</italic> is small (<italic>n</italic> ≤ 7). We also derived a nontrival lower bound on the sizes of the optimal universal SP functions  (&OHgr;(<italic>n</italic> log <italic>n</italic>)).
53246587
A revisit to floorplan optimization by Lagrangian relaxation
52810492
Optimal cell flipping in placement and floorplanning
In a placed circuit, there are a lot of movable cells that can be flipped to further reduce the total wirelength, without affecting the original placement solution. We aim at solving this flipping problem optimally. However, solving such a problem optimally is non-trivial given the gigantic sizes of modern circuits. We are able to identify a large portion of cells (about 75%) of which the orientation (flipped or not flipped) can be determined independent of the orientations of all the other cells. We have derived three non-trivial conditions to identify those so called independent cells, strictly solvable cells and conditionally solvable cells. In this way, we can greatly reduce the number of cells whose orientations are dependent on each other. Finally, the cell flipping problem of the remaining dependent cells can be formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem and solved optimally. However, this may still be too slow for extremely large circuits and we have applied two other methods, linear programming (LP) and linear programming followed by mixed integer linear programming (LP+MILP) to solve the problem. Experimental results show that by identifying those independent and solvable cells first and applying the LP+MILP technique, we can solve this flipping problem effectively and obtain results just 0.01% more than the optimal. In addition, we can improve the wirelength and number of overflow tiles by 5% and 9% respectively on the floorplanning benchmarks
6347443
IPR: An Integrated Placement and Routing Algorithm
In nanometer-scale VLSI technologies, several interconnect issues like routing congestion and interconnect delay have become the main concerns in placement. However, all previous placement approaches optimize some very primitive interconnect models during placement. These models are far from the actual interconnect implementation in the routing stage. As a result, placement solution considered to be good by primitive interconnect models may turn out to be poor after routing. In addition, the placement may not even be routable and timing closure may not be achievable. In this paper, we propose to address the inconsistency between the placement and routing objectives by fully integrating global routing into placement. As a first attempt to this novel approach, we focus on routability issue. We call the proposed algorithm for routing congestion minimization IPR (integrated placement and routing). To ensure the algorithm to be computationally efficient, efficient placement and routing algorithms FastPlace, FastDP and FastRoute are integrated, and well-designed methods are proposed to integrate them efficiently and effectively. Experimental results show that IPR reduces overflow by 36%, global routing wirelength by 3.6%, and runtime by 36% comparing to ROOSTER, which is the previous best academic routability- driven placer.
6722156
An efficient and effective detailed placement algorithm
In the past few years, there has been a lot of research in the area of global placement. In comparison, not much attention has been paid to the detailed placement problem. Existing detailed placers either fail to improve upon the excellent solution quality enabled by good global placers or are very slow. To handle the above problems, we focus on the detailed placement problem. We present an efficient and effective detailed placement algorithm to handle the wirelength minimization problem. The main contributions of our work are: (1) an efficient Global Swap technique to identify a pair of cells that can be swapped to reduce wirelength; (2) a flow that combines the Global Swap technique with other heuristics to produce very good wirelength; (3) an efficient single-segment clustering technique to optimally shift cells within a segment to minimize wirelength. On legalized mPL5 global placements on the IBM standard-cell benchmarks, our detailed placer can achieve 19.0%, 13.2% and 0.5% more wirelength reduction compared to Fengshui5.0, rowironing and Domino respectively. Correspondingly we are 3.6/spl times/ 2.8/spl times/ and 15/spl times/ faster. On the ISPD05 benchmarks (Gi-Joon Nam et al., 2005), we achieve 8.1% and 9.1% more wirelength reduction compared to Fengshui5.0 and rowironing respectively. Correspondingly we are 3.1/spl times/ and 2.3/spl times/ faster.
24078054
Greedy wire-sizing is linear time
The greedy wire-sizing algorithm (GWSA) has been experimentally shown to be very efficient, but no mathematical analysis on its convergence rate has ever been reported. In this paper, we consider GWSA for continuous wire sizing. We prove that GWSA converges linearly to the optimal solution, which implies that the run time of GWSA is linear with respect to the number of wire segments for any fixed precision of the solution. Moreover, we also prove that this is true for any starting solution. This is a surprising result because previously it was believed that in order to guarantee convergence, GWSA had to start from a solution in which every wire segment is set to the minimum (or maximum) possible width. Our result implies that GWSA can use a good starting solution to achieve faster convergence. We demonstrate this point by showing that the minimization of maximum delay and the minimization of area subject to maximum delay bound using Lagrangian relaxation can be sped up by more than 50%.
12245644
Multicast communication in wormhole-routed star graph interconnection networks
Multicast, an important communication mechanism, is frequently applied in parallel computing. The star graph interconnection network, when compared with the hypercube network, being with low degree and small diameter, has been recognized to be an attractive alternative to the popular hypercube network. In this paper, we derive a node labeling formula based on a hamiltonian path and propose four efficient multicast routing schemes in wormhole-routed star networks with multidestination routing capability. All of the four proposed schemes are path-based and deadlock-free. The first scheme, dual-path routing, sends the message in parallel through two independent paths (toward high label nodes and low label nodes). The second one, shortcut-node-based dual-path routing, is similar to dual-path routing except that the routing tries to find a shortcut node to route the message as soon as possible to reduce the length of transmission path. The third one, multipath routing, is a multiple dual-path routing strategy that includes source-to-relay and relay-to-destination phases. The last scheme, proximity grouping routing, is similar to multipath routing except that in the partitioning step of source and destination nodes the relation of spatial locality of nodes is also taken into account to reduce the length of transmission paths. Finally, the experimental results are given to show that the performance based on unicast-based and traditional hamiltonian-path routing schemes can be improved significantly by the four proposed routing schemes respectively.
8131087
Multipath-Based Multicasting Strategies for Wormhole-Routed Star Graph Interconnection Networks
The star graph interconnection network has been recognized as an attractive alternative to the popular hypercube network. In this paper, we present a multipath-based multicast routing model for wormholerouted star graph networks, propose two efficient multipath routing schemes, and contrast the performance of the proposed schemes with the performance of the scheme presented in our previous work. Both of the two proposed schemes have been proven to be deadlock-free. The first scheme, simplemultipath routing, uses multiple independent paths for concurrent multicasting. The second scheme, two-phase multipath routing, includes two phases: source-to-relay and relay-to-destination. For each phase, multicasting is carried out using simple multipath routing. Experimental results show that, for short and medium messages with small message startup latencies, the proposed schemes reduce multicast latency more efficiently than other schemes.
17686405
A time-series biclustering algorithm for revealing co-regulated genes
Although existing bicluster algorithms claimed to be able to discover co-regulated genes under a subset of given experiment conditions, they ignore the inherent sequential relationship between crucial time points and thus are not applicable to analyze time-series gene expression data. A simple and effective deletion-based algorithm, using the mean squared residue score as a measure, was developed to bicluster time-series gene expression data. While enforcing a threshold value for the score, the algorithm alternately eliminates genes and time points according to their correlation to the bicluster. To ensure the time locality, only the starting and ending points in the time interval are eligible for deletion. As a result, the number of genes and the length of time interval are simultaneously maximized. Our experimental results shown that the proposed method is capable of identifying co-regulated genes characterized by partial time-course data that previous methods failed to discover.
41515379
The I+ Test
The I test is an efficient and precise data dependence method to ascertain whether integer solutions exist for one-dimensional arrays with constant bounds. For one-dimensional arrays with variable limits, the I test assumes that there may exist integer solutions. In this paper, we propose the I+ test|an extended version of the I test. The I+ test can be applied towards determining whether integer solutions exist for onedimensional arrays with either variable or constant limits, improving the applicable range of the I test. Experiments with benchmark cited from EISPACK, LINPACK, Parallel loops, Livermore loops and Vector loops showed that among 1189 pairs of one-dimensional arrays tested, 183 had their data dependence analysis amended by the I+ test. That is, the I+ test increases the success rate of the I test by approximately 15:4 percent. Comparing with the Power test and the Omega test, the I+ test has higher accuracy than the Power test and shares the same accuracy with the Omega test when determining integer solutions for these 1189 pairs of one-dimensional arrays, but has much better efficiency over them.
5795561
An in-depth analysis of information markets with aggregate uncertainty
The novel idea of setting up Internet-based virtual markets, information markets, to aggregate dispersed information and predict outcomes of uncertain future events has empirically found its way into many domains. But the theoretical examination of information markets has lagged relative to their implementation and use. This paper proposes a simple theoretical model of information markets to understand their information dynamics. We investigate and provide initial answers to a series of research questions that are important to understanding how information markets work, which are: (1) Does an information market converge to a consensus equilibrium? (2) If yes, how fast is the convergence process? (3) What is the best possible equilibrium of an information market? and (4) Is an information market guaranteed to converge to the best possible equilibrium?