Design and implementation of a delay-optimized universal programmable routing circuit for FPGAs

Abstract

This paper presents a universal field programmable gate array (FPGA) programmable routing circuit, focusing primarily on a delay optimization. Under the precondition of the routing resource's flexibility and routability, the number of programmable interconnect points (PIP) is reduced, and a multiplexer (MUX) plus a BUFFER structure is adopted as the programmable switch. Also, the method of offset lines and the method of complementary hanged end-lines are applied to the TILE routing circuit and the I/O routing circuit, respectively. All of the above features ensure that the whole FPGA chip is highly repeatable, and the signal delay is uniform and predictable over the total chip. Meanwhile, the BUFFER driver is optimized to decrease the signal delay by up to 5%. The proposed routing circuit is applied to the Fudan programmable device (FDP) FPGA, which has been taped out with an SMIC 0.18-μm logic 1P6M process. The test result shows that the programmable routing resource works correctly, and the signal delay over the chip is highly uniform and predictable.