Floorplan assisted data rate enhancement through wire pipelining: a real assessment

The recent shift towards wire pipelining (WP) mandated by technological factors has attracted attention towards latency-controlled floorplanning, However, no systematic study has been published so far that takes into account block and logic delay limitations. The present work aims at filling the gap by showing that block delay can limit and possibly prevent any real gain WP might promise, Recurring to adaptive WP schemes, on the other hand, allows relevant gains. We built a floorplanner that optimizes for maximum data rate, taking into account various models of block delay, and compares them to the optimal results obtained when no wire pipelining is employed. Experiments with suitable floorplanning benchmarks and case studies are performed to substantiate theoretical intuitions.