CAM‐based hardware engine for geometrical problems in VLSI design

Abstract

A new hardware engine called CHARGE (CAM‐based Hardware Engine for Geometrical Problems) is presented to accelerate basic geometrical search algorithms for VLSI layout design and verification. Due to the world‐parallel nature of the Content Addressable Memory (CAM), basic geometrical search problems can be solved in constant time, independent of the number of geometrical data. This approach has flexibility to exclude complicated coding for various data structures depending on subproblems. The architecture of CHARGE and performance data measured on a prototype machine are described.