In plain words: An AI agent learns where to put logic blocks on an FPGA chip to keep wires short, splitting the board into smaller pieces to tame the number of layouts. Tests showed both the learned placement and the split-board trick helped on chip layout tasks.
Abstract · FPGA Divide-and-Conquer Placement using Deep Reinforcement Learning
This paper introduces the problem of learning to place logic blocks in Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and a learning-based method. In contrast to previous search-based placement algorithms, we instead employ Reinforcement Learning (RL) with the goal of minimizing wirelength. In addition to our preliminary learning results, we also evaluated a novel decomposition to address the nature of large search space when placing many blocks on a chipboard. Empirical experiments evaluate the effectiveness of the learning and decomposition paradigms on FPGA placement tasks.
Shang Wang, Deepak Ranganatha Sastry Mamillapalli, Tianpei Yang, Matthew E. Taylor
arXiv:2404.13061 · cs.AR, cs.AI, cs.LG · submitted Apr 11, 2024
abstract · pdf · html · accepted by ISEDA2024