Floorplanning techniques

Hi, I recently started working with FPGAs and am would like to learn about floorplanning techniques. Could someone point me to documents or design guides dealing with what issues should be kept in mind while floorplanning a complex design.. Thanks to all who reply!! R.B.

Reply to
richie singh
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Hi,

For FPGAs, the Vendor tools will do the the floor planning job in a better way. You no need to spend time on that. All you need to know, how to constraint the tool to make them to do what you want exactly.

like clock frequency, Input setup-hold, Output setup-hold and so on... with this; tool will place the logics to acheive your timing requiement.

Regards, Muthu

Reply to
Muthu

Muthu, Thanks for your reply. I am interested in floorplanning because there can be a scenario where the tool will not be able to meet timing and manual effort will be involved in floorplanning. In such a case what type of issues need to be kept in mind. Thanks!! R.B

Reply to
richie singh

R.B.

Yeah ideally you'd like to solve your problem by setting up constraints to guide the tools, because your floorplanning work is more likely to be wasted if your design changes significantly enough (though creating relative placement macros for sub blocks of your design can help preserve your work). Area constraints, as opposed to timing constraints, can be helpful in nudging the tools to placing smarter.

Of course, like you said, the tools might not have enough smarts to do what you want or it might take too long to place/route without some intervention.

As far as floorplanning, the main thing is is to understand the layout of the routing resources in your target FPGA. Xilinx's Spartan-III, for example, has direct lines (that connect adjacent CLBs), double lines (that connect every other), hex lines (which don't connect every 6 but every 3), and long lines (which do connect every 6). So from best to least, you want logic in: 1) the same CLB, 2) adjecent CLB, 3) two CLBs away, 4) three CLBs away, or 5) six CLBs away. Four and five CLBs away could be worse than six.

A lot of times I find that when I floorplan I'm fixing some crazy things the tools have done. Like for some reason the tools will take a 32-bit register and instead of keeping it in order, it'll mix it up in a seemingly random fashion.

They seemed to have architected their FPGAs for data to flow horizontally, so keep that in mind. I'm not sure if it matters, but I always go left-to-right because it feels natural.

Heh sorry I don't have too many pointers. I try not to floorplan (unless I want to veg out. I find Xilinx's Floorplanner relaxing, it uses pretty colors) and it feels more like an intuitive art than a science. One thing you can try is to compile your design with only the difficult logic and the other logic removed. This will help speed up the floorplan-route-results cycle which sometimes can be more productive than trying to plan everything up front, especially when we don't have a good knowledge of the routing or we have the wrong ideas.

Best of luck, Vinh

Reply to
Vinh Pham

Well ... first of all, the tools don't floorplan. At all. They simply place and route the logic for a design in order to meet whatever constraints you specify. Floorplanning, from my vantage point, involves (and requires) a higher level of thinking than what these tools can provide.

There have been many discussions on this N.G. about this. Hands down, if you know what you are doing you can squeeze gobs more performance out of a smaller and cheaper device than the tools seem to be able to deliver. Floorplanning might also involve knowledge that the tools would not have purely from timing constraints, like "my dev board has a two million gate device but the product will have a 500K".

Again, discussed extensively here, the pushbutton approach doesn't tend to do a good job aligning data paths and getting creative about layout. All you have to do is start getting into building RPM's to realize how bad it can get (when you compare to pushbutton) even in small test designs.

Also, floorplanning might be absolutely necessary for certain design flows.

The bottom line is that the pushbutton approach does not floorplan at all, that still requires a human brain with more than one neuron firing.

The good news is that a properly constrained design is very likely to work well via pushbutton these days. I would imagine that most designers out there don't get into floorplanning and RPM's at all. It is only when you want (or need) to push some limit (area, speed, device migration, etc.) that playing in deeper water is the only way to go.

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Martin Euredjian
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Reply to
Martin Euredjian

Somewhat dated, but at least a start:

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Philip

Philip Freidin Fliptronics

Reply to
Philip Freidin

If you are considering floorplanning- consider a physical synthesis tool such as Amplify or Precision Physical Synthesis. It lets you floorplan closer to the RTL- so it is easier to understand. Search the board for more info.

Also- you should consider the backend tool that you are using. These backend tools are getting better all the time. For example, the latest version of Foundation (6.1 I believe) will do a far better job that the version 4 I used to use. So when looking back at posts- keep that in mind.

Reply to
MS

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