Reinforcement Learning for Electronic Design Automation: Case Studies and Perspectives

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have recently seen rapid advancement and adoption in the field of electronic design automation (EDA) in both academia and industry. In this paper, we first give an overview of RL and its applications in EDA. In particular, we discuss three case studies: chip ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Budak, Ahmet F., Jiang, Zixuan, Zhu, Keren, Mirhoseini, Azalia, Goldie, Anna, Pan, David Z.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Deep learning
Design automation
Electric potential
Industries
Neural networks
Reinforcement learning
Training
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have recently seen rapid advancement and adoption in the field of electronic design automation (EDA) in both academia and industry. In this paper, we first give an overview of RL and its applications in EDA. In particular, we discuss three case studies: chip macro placement, analog transistor sizing, and logic synthesis. In collaboration with Google Brain, we develop a hybrid RL and analytical mixed-size placer and achieve better results with less training time on public and proprietary benchmarks. Working with Intel, we develop an RL-inspired optimizer for analog circuit sizing, combining the strengths of deep neural networks and reinforcement learning to achieve state-of-the-art black-box optimization results. We also apply RL to the popular logic synthesis framework ABC and obtain promising results. Through these case studies, we discuss the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and challenges of RL in EDA.
ISSN:2153-697X
DOI:10.1109/ASP-DAC52403.2022.9712578