NaPer: A TSV Noise-Aware Placer

Abstract

Through-silicon-via (TSV)-to-TSV coupling issue can degrade the signal integrity in 3-D integrated circuit designs. This paper develops a 3-D partitioning-based force-directed placer, NaPer, to reduce the total coupling noise between TSVs and alleviate the maximum coupling noise between them. We introduce two denoise forces: TSV decoupling force and TSV density force. The TSV decoupling force is determined by the coupling noise between TSVs for separating strong coupling TSVs, and the TSV density force is determined by the TSV density for evenly distributing TSVs. The experimental results show that NaPer can effectively reduce 15.0% total TSV coupling noise and 42.7% maximum TSV coupling noise on average with only 4.5% wirelength overhead. Besides, NaPer also shows great performance in wirelength that is competitive to the state-of-the-art 3-D placer.