arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Hybrid ML for Lightweight Pre-Route Delay Estimation in Open-Source IC Design

Hybrid ML for Lightweight Pre-Route Delay Estimation in Open-Source IC Design proposes a lightweight machine learning approach that combines a decision tree with linear regression to improve pre-routing delay estimations for the open-source RTL-to-GDSII tool OpenLane. The model reduces error by 80% compared to OpenLane’s estimates and improves performance by 71% even without using OpenLane-specific parameters. It is over 300 times smaller, twice as fast, and offers higher explainability than traditional delay propagation techniques and more complex ML models.

By Marvin Castro Castro, Erick Carvajal Barboza
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Sep 3

LevelSyn: Physical-Aware Logic Synthesis via Level-Asynchronous Graph Neural Networks

LevelSyn introduces a physical-aware logic synthesis framework that uses a level-asynchronous Graph Neural Network to predict accurate gate coordinates by learning the structural and directional semantics of And-Inverter Graphs. It incorporates a level-aligned subgraph partitioning strategy to handle large designs and integrates these spatial insights into a new synthesis engine within the Berkeley ABC framework. Experiments on the EPFL benchmark suite show significant improvements, with an average power reduction of 6.89%, a timing delay improvement of 27.48%, and a 99.59% reduction in design rule check violations.

arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 7

Climbing the Design Ladder: Sequential Knowledge Distillation for Early-Stage Circuit Timing Prediction

The paper introduces STEP‑KD, a Sequential Timing Evaluation via Progressive Knowledge Distillation framework for predicting post‑routing timing from early‑stage design data. By training teacher models at post‑routing, post‑placement, and post‑floorplan stages and sequentially distilling their knowledge to a post‑synthesis student model through representation alignment, STEP‑KD bridges the abstraction gap that hampers existing machine learning approaches. Experiments on diverse circuits show that STEP‑KD reduces the weighted mean absolute percentage error of Total Negative Slack prediction to 19.78% versus 74.84% for the industry‑standard Static Timing Analysis tool.

By Reza Moravej, Fahad Rahman Amik, Zhanguang Zhang, Didier Ch\'etelat, Yingxue Zhang