An optimized links-to-layout flow for timing critical designs

Timing closure flow for digital designs is referred to as links-to-layout (LTL) flow. The bottlenecks with this flow leads to non-optimal designs. Timing closure becomes totally unpredictable for complex designs and leads to significant increase in overall cost, in terms of die-area and time-to-market. Commercial tools to solve this problem are not yet fully proven and are also very expensive. An optimized LTL flow that addresses the timing and area problems was defined, implemented and verified. Significant improvements in design cycle time (60%-70%) coupled with excellent area gains (7-10%) were obtained using the optimized LTL flow.