Reconfigurable Computing

Chapter . FPGA Placement

One thing that stands out in this book’s contents: While most individual steps in the compilation flow are covered in a single chapter, placement is covered in three—Chapters 14 through 16. Placement is actually just the problem of assigning specific logic computations to individual logic blocks in the architecture, so why does it merit a longer treatment than, say, FPGA routing? There are at least two reasons.

One reason is historical: Until relatively recently, the placement problem was small enough that structured approaches were possible. These included hand placement, which produced higher-quality results than automatic placement. In contrast, for a problem such as routing, FPGA routers were very fast and efficient, ...