Itools is a complete timing-driven placement and global routing package applicable to row based and building block design styles. Itools is capable of handling any of the row-based design styles, namely, standard cell circuits, gate arrays and sea-of-gates circuits. In addition, itools is applicable to circuits containing building blocks or macro cells of any rectilinear shape. Furthermore, the cells may have fixed geometry including pin locations (hard macro cells) or the cells may have an estimated area with a specified aspect-ratio range, and with pins that need to be placed (soft macro cells). Itools is also applicable to floorplanning problems and may be used to completely place and global route mixed macro/standard cell circuits.

Component Default Assignee
cluster bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
A simulated annealing clustering program using internally by the placement program.
EZ bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
EZ is the easy to use interface to itools applications. It uses a new concept in software delivery called Dynamic Documentation. Applications are started and results are displayed within the documentation. Documentation does not become outdated as applications change. There is less context switching and faster learning.
grouter bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Row-based global router which is limited to horizontal rows. This is also know as the first generation global router.
idetailer bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Detail routing program which connects the pins of nets in the design. The detail router has both gridded and gridless algorithms and is controlled through Tcl scripts.
iflow bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Program which controls sequences or flows of programs to perform a placement and routing task.
ifp bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
First generation floorplanner which places and floorplans macro cells or blocks.
igp bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Generalized placement/floorplan program. This program is the second generation placer which will handle macro and standard cells simulataneously.
igrouter bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Generalized global router which can handle both horizontal and vertical rows as well as macro cells. This is also known as the second generation global router.
iplacesc bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Itools row-based placer
iroute bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
The routing control program which calls the detail router.
itranslate bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
General purpose translator which supports translation of GDS2, Verilog, LEF/DEF, Spice, EDIF in/out of itools native ASCII language.
simplify bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
Internal program to manipulate the user's netlist for various programs in a flow.
syntax bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
The itools syntax checker which verifies the native itools input files.
Tcl/Tk GUI bill_swartz@www.internetcad.com
The graphical interface which is written in the script language Tcl.