Java']Java-based learning of algorithms for VLSI physical design automation

Courseware is presented here, based on Java applets, that is designed to facilitate better understanding of some of the most popular algorithms in semi-custom IC physical design automation. The applets have been applied successfully in the course Microelectronic Design II, a telecommunication engineering fifth-year subject at the University of Vigo (Spain). This method does not wholly replace traditional lecture classes, but it enhances them by displaying graphically the intermediate solutions of an algorithm's execution. Thus, students can easily and quickly assimilate what implies a change of value in a certain design parameter, such as the annealing temperature, the crossover or mutation operators, the cost function of a placement, a routing, etc. In fact, they not only understood much more rapidly all those concepts inherited from nature, but they repeatedly enjoyed executing the algorithms by changing their parameters, with one criterion in mind (not randomly), in order to optimize a given layout.