TritonRoute-WXL: The Open-Source Router With Integrated DRC Engine

Andrew B. Kahng, Lutong Wang, Bangqi Xu

2021IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems33 citationsDOI

Abstract

Routing is a crucial stage in a modern design automation tool flow for advanced technology nodes. Works in the recent open literature tend to divide routing into separate global routing (GR) and detailed routing (DR) steps without addressing the correlation issues (e.g., local nets) between these two steps. In this work, we present TritonRoute-WXL (TR-WXL), a unified global-detailed router capable of delivering design rule check-clean routing solutions in commercial sub-16-nm technologies. The major contributions of TR-WXL include an end-to-end routing framework that closely connects GR and DR, and an improved DR flow. With a code release under a permissive open-source license, TR-WXL achieves unparalleled solution quality in terms of DR and global-detailed routing (GDR) as compared to known best solutions from all published academic routers.

Topics & Concepts

RouterComputer sciencePolicy-based routingStatic routingRouting (electronic design automation)LicenseMetricsComputer networkMultipath routingDistributed computingRouting protocolOperating systemVLSI and Analog Circuit TestingVLSI and FPGA Design TechniquesAdvancements in Photolithography Techniques