학술논문

Thermal-Aware Fixed-Outline 3-D IC Floorplanning: An End-to-End Learning-Based Approach
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst. Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on. 31(12):1882-1895 Dec, 2023
Subject
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Computing and Processing
Integrated circuits
Through-silicon vias
Temperature measurement
Power distribution
Thermal management
Integrated circuit modeling
Clustering algorithms
3-D integrated circuits (3-D ICs)
deep k-means clustering
floorplanning
graph convolutional network (GCN)
multiagent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL)
Language
ISSN
1063-8210
1557-9999
Abstract
High temperature and temperature nonuniformity pose significant challenges in 3-D integrated circuits (3-D ICs). Numerous studies have explored thermal issues in 3-D IC floorplanning. However, most existing handcrafted heuristic algorithms suffer from long iteration cycles, resulting in inefficient thermal management and no guarantee of optimal performance. In addition, with the increasing complexity of modern integrated circuit design, current floorplanning techniques encounter the “curse of dimensionality” and struggle to optimize large-scale cases. To address these challenges, this article proposes a novel end-to-end learning-based approach for thermal-aware fixed-outline 3-D IC floorplanning. In the tier assignment stage, we utilize a deep ${k}$ -means clustering algorithm to allocate modules to different tiers, aiming to achieve an improved cross-tier power distribution. In the global distribution (GD) stage, we formulate the floorplanning problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). By combining graph convolutional networks (GCNs) with a multiagent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) algorithm, we optimize the positions of modules and through-silicon vias (TSVs), while incorporating an attention mechanism in the centralized critic to enhance cooperation among agents. Finally, in the TSV assignment (TA) stage, we refine the TSV positions using the MADRL algorithm, further reducing wirelength and temperature in 3-D ICs. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art heuristic-based 3-D IC floorplanner in terms of wirelength and temperature optimization.