Virtuosity: Device-Level Routing for Advanced Nodes—Tree Route Flow

This is the last blog in the Virtuoso Device-level Routing blog series. This blog completes the story of how a trunk and a twig became a tree and describes the Tree Route flow and its features. 

Recap of the Blog Series

Before we move on to our last blog, let us quickly summarize what we have covered in the previous Virtuoso Device-Level Routing blogs:

• The first blog highlighted the use of the Finish Trunk command to complete routing.
• The second blog was about generating trunks for device-level routing.
• In the third post, we talked about the new trunk-to-trunk mesh routing feature.

Why Do Users Hesitate to Try Automated Routing?

Alex, a layout design engineer, is working on a complex, row-based, device-level design for advanced nodes. He is struggling to route the design using automatic routing and is keen to have a solution that would help him improve his productivity on such designs. 

Solution - New Tree Route Flow

Alex happens to meet his friend John, who is also a layout designer, and discusses the problem with him. John recommends Alex about the fully automated out-of-the-box structured routing available in Virtuoso - Tree Route. During their conversation, John highlights the groundbreaking features of the new Tree Route flow.

• Simplified use model, which is quick and easy to adopt
• Increased layout productivity through user-controlled automation
• Fully automatic routing solution and less GUI controls to manage
• Create and connect all levels of trunks, automatically
• Enable auto-mesh to automatically identify regions for trunk-to-trunk mesh routing
• Generate trunks and try to route the net using the tree routing algorithms, automatically  

The new Tree Route flow automatically identifies and routes mesh, ring (tap cell rings), and tree structures in the design. The Tree Route flow lets you quickly connect device pins in a structured topology.

In the below video, you can see how the Tree Route flow can be used to automatically route nets with symmetry constraints in a specified area of a design. Running the Highlight Trunks command after routing using the Tree Route flow displays the different levels of trunks in various colors.

 The Tree Route flow sets your routing free and routes a forest in seconds. This helps the layout designers to increase layout productivity.

Related Resources

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

About Virtuosity

Virtuosity has been our most viewed and admired blog series for a long time that has brought to fore some lesser known, yet very useful software and documentation improvements, and also shed light on some exciting new offerings in Virtuoso. We are now expanding the scope of this series by broadcasting the voice of different bloggers and experts, who would continue to preserve the legacy of Virtuosity, and try to give new dimensions to it by covering topics across the length and breadth of Virtuoso, and a lot more… Click Subscribe to visit the Subscription box at the top of the page in which you can submit your email address to receive notifications about our latest Virtuosity posts.

Happy Reading! 

Parul Agarwal and John Wilkosz (Team Virtuoso)