NanoV: nanowire-based VLSI design

ABSTRACT

In the coming decade, CMOS technology is expected to approach its scaling limitations. Among the proposed nan-otechnologies, nanowires have the edge in the size of circuits and logic arrays that have already been fabricated and experimentally evaluated. For this technology, logic-level design methodologies are being developed. The time has now come to develop automated tools for implementing VLSI designs using nanowires. In this paper, we discuss a design automation tool, called NanoV, to fulfill this need for nanowires. It is a complete logic-to-layout tool with built-in defect-aware steps since the defect levels in nanotechnologies are expected to be relatively high (between 1 to 10%). We are unaware of any other such comprehensive VLSI design tool for nanowires. We report area/delay/power results for various benchmarks implemented using our tool. We intend to make the tool available on the web.

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Index Terms

• Hardware

  • Electronic design automation

    • Physical design (EDA)

  • Hardware validation

  • Very large scale integration design