IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN, VOL. CAD-3, NO.

3, JULY

250

1984

An Approach to Topological Pin Assignment

H. N ELSON BRADY, MEMBER, IEEE

Abstract-One of the methods of increasing routability of an inte

grated circuit or printed circuit board, is to improve the assignment
of connection nets to component (gate, chip, etc.) pins. The quality

of the work.

of a pin assignment is judged based on factors such as predicted wire

length, wiring crossovers, and wiring congestion.

Finally, section VI gives some conclusions of

the research.
II. TOPOLOGICAL PIN ASSIGNMENT

This paper describes

Two stages, ini

This paper suggests an approach to pin assignment which

tial pin assignment and assignment improvement, are described in

deals with some of the limitations of current approaches. The

detail.

pin assignment technique developed here is called topological

topological heuristic algorithms for pin assignment.

For all cases, example diagrams are provided.

The heuristic

approaches demonstrated are highly tunable to specific routers.

because some analysis is performed to determine how compo

nents and their pins are arranged with respect to each other,
and to the layout area.

I. INTRODUCTION

NTELLIG ENT assignment of net onnections to pins can

.
reduce WIre length, and connectIon path crossings and

wiring congestion, two primary causes of routing failure. A

simple example of a pin assignment problem is the assignment

of nets to the input pins of a two input AND gate, these pins
being logically equivalent.

This pin assignment problem has

been suggested to be NPcomplete

[5], [9],

prodding the de

velopment of several heuristic approaches toward an optimal

solution.
Most pin assignment heuristics are similar in many ways.
Assignments are made a component at a time, and a functional
group at a time within the component.

An example of a

functional group is the inputs of an AND gate.

Also, the net

to-pin assignments to be made are ordered, and performed in

a sequential fashion.

And finally, because the assignments are

not require any analysis of the orientation of components as

do most existing methods.
As do most other pin assignment methods, this one makes
assignments for each pin group a component at a time, and
makes multiple passes over the entire component set.

for illustrative purposes in the following discussion of pin

assignment heuristics. Note that any arbitrary shape is accept
able, the only requirement is that a definable geometric center
exist.

For illustrative purposes, let us assume that all pins on

the component are net interchangable

be drawn toward on the component undergoing assignment.

Both cases are usually decided by simple positional analysis
of net point coordinates, for all nets connected to the assign
ment component

[2], [3], [6], [8]. A more sophisticated

[7], but Koren's solution as

analysis is provided by Koren

well as the others have several limitations to improving rout

ability

[4].

What is needed is a topological pin assignment

heuristic which is more closely attuned to the routing prob

lem.

The ultimate goal is to assign nets to pins in such a

fashion as to maximize routability.

The remainder of this paper describes new pin assignment
heuristic algorithms which deal with limitations of current
approaches.

Section II is a brief introduction.

describes initial pin assignment.

assignment improvement.

Section III

Section IV describes pin

Section V provides some results

Manuscript receipt received August 2 " 1983' revised February 23 ,

1984.

The author is with Research & Development, V. R. Information

Systems, Inc., Austin, TX 78727.

(worst

case) .

There

are two phases of pin assignment for each component:

initial pin assignment, and

(2) assignment improvement.

(1)
Both

stages are described in the following sections.

not made globally, successive passes must be made until no

Differences in methods arise during the ordering of net

square component with two or three pins on each side is used

III. INITIAL ASSIGNMENT

more assignment score improvement is possible.

assignment to pins, and in deciding the pins that nets should

The methods described are highly

tunable to specific layout environments and routers, and do

As each component is undergoing assignment a "radar

screen" is conceptually imposed over it with the screen cen
tered at the component center, as in Fig.

l.

The component

undergoing assignment will henceforth be referred to as the

main component.

The component pins indicated as open dots

are conceptually mapped onto a circle surrounding the com

ponent; their mapped locations are indicated by solid dots. In
Fig.

1,

the X's represent the nearest pins of other components,

in the same nets as those to be assigned to the main compo

nent pins.

A simplified explanation of the heuristic is:

the

radar sweeps clockwise around the full circle. The net number
of the first X struck is assigned to the first component pin on
the mapping circle, the second X's net to the second compo
nent pin, and so on until all the component pins have net
assignments.

Each X net number is unique, and the number

of X's will always equal the number of pins on the main com
ponent which are net assignable.
There are several methods for determining the X pins in Fig.
1.

The Simplest method is to select the nearest net neighbors

to the main component pins. Distance is measured as Manhat

tan distance
ternal pin.

0028-0070/84/0700-0250$01.00

[l]

from the main component center to an ex

On the first assignment pass, if two or more pins

1984 I E E E