OpenDesign flow database: the infrastructure for VLSI design and design automation research

Recently, there have been a slew of design automation contests and released benchmarks. ISPD place & route contests, DAC placement contests, timing analysis contests at TAU and CAD contests at ICCAD are good examples in the past and more of new contests are planned in the upcoming conferences. These are interesting and important events that stimulate the research of the target problems and advance the cutting edge technologies. Nevertheless, most contests focus only on the point tool problems instead of addressing the design flow or co-optimization among design tools. OpenDesign Flow Database platform is developed to direct attentions to the overall design flow from logic synthesis to physical design optimization [1]. The goals are to provide an academic reference design flow based on past CAD contest results, the database for design benchmarks and point tool libraries, and standard design input/output formats to build a customized design flow by composing point tool libraries.