VLSI Circuit Layout

Abstract VLSI circuits have experienced significant growth in the past half a century. As an important design phase, VLSI physical design is an extremely tedious and error‐prone process. In this article, the fundamental characteristics of physical design are described. Then the general physical design methodology mainly for VLSI digital systems is discussed. In particular, three major physical design subproblems, including partitioning, floorplan and placement, and routing, are explained in more detail. The formulation of each subproblem and the related algorithms are presented. The state‐of‐the‐art teachniques are summarized. To exhibit a more general overview, the features of physical design for analog integrated circuits are also outlined. The article concludes with some emerging topics regarding the modern VLSI layout.