Recent advances and challenges in physical design automation

A key factor that enabled the development of the microelectronics industry was the creation of sophisticated software tools for design automation. The tremendous evolution of manufacturing capacity was primarily fuelled by scaling down the transistors. Thus, besides being possible to integrate an increasing number of devices, they have also become increasingly faster. However, this wonderful manufacturing capacity would be of little use if it were not possible for human designers to specify the different functions, structures and physical characteristics of highly complex projects in a progressively more efficient way. That is why the most traditional design problems such as placement, routing, gate sizing, are still hot topics today. In the last years, all these subjects regained a lot of attention and experimented significant, sometimes radical, advancements. In this talk we review basic concepts at the definition of such problems, which in general require combinatory optimization, and cover some of the most important achievements in placement and routing in the last decade. They were made possible by the combined effort of industry and academia with the release of realistic benchmark sets and the promotion of several research contests. Finally, we can better understand some of the current challenges that must be faced to keep pace with the next big designs, highlighting the relevance of research in this area.