Q: Hi, Avina. I understand your team developed the custom router in Custom Compiler. Can you explain how custom routing is different from digital routing?
Avina Verma:
Well, our job is to route signals that typically require hand-crafting—for example, connections in analog and custom digital IP blocks. Our goal is to improve custom design productivity while still delivering extremely high quality of results (QoR).
The big difference between custom and digital routing is that the digital paradigm is well standardized, so digital routing requirements are easy to abstract into a general solution. This is less true for custom. For custom, even designers working at the same company, on the same node and on the same type of design might have different expectations for what the router should do.
Of course, digital designs can also include signals that need custom-style routing. So, the router we developed for Custom Compiler is also available in IC Compiler II to handle these signals.