Multi-objective digital circuit block optimisation based on cell mapping in an industrial electronic design automation flow

Modern electronic design automation (EDA) tools can handle the complexity of state-of-the-art electronic systems by decomposing them into smaller blocks or cells, introducing different levels of abstraction and staged design flows. However, throughout each independently optimised design step, overheads and inefficiencies can accumulate in the resulting overall design. Performing design-specific optimisation from a more global viewpoint requires more time due to the larger search space but has the potential to provide solutions with improved performanc. In this work, a fully-automated, multi-objective (MO) EDA flow is introduced to address this issue. It specifically tunes drive strength mapping, prior to physical implementation, through MO population-based search algorithms. Designs are evaluated with respect to their power, performance and area (PPA). The proposed approach is aimed at digital circuit optimisation at the block level, where it is capable of expanding the design space and offers a set of trade-off solutions for different case-specific utilisation. We have applied the proposed multi-objective electronic design automation flow (MOEDA) framework to ISCAS-85 and EPFL benchmark circuits by using a commercial 65 nm standard cell library. The experimental results demonstrate how the MOEDA flow enhances the solutions initially generated by the standard digital flow and how simultaneously a significant improvement in PPA metrics is achieved.