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Why are Graph Neural Networks Effective for EDA Problems?: (Invited Paper)

Published: 22 December 2022 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the source of effectiveness of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) in EDA, particularly in the VLSI design automation domain. We argue that the effectiveness comes from the fact that GNNs implicitly embed the prior knowledge and inductive biases associated with given VLSI tasks, which is one of the three approaches to make a learning algorithm physics-informed. These inductive biases are different to those common used in GNNs designed for other structured data, such as social networks and citation networks. We will illustrate this principle with several recent GNN examples in the VLSI domain, including predictive tasks such as switching activity prediction, timing prediction, parasitics prediction, layout symmetry prediction, as well as optimization tasks such as gate sizing and macro and cell transistor placement. We will also discuss the challenges of applications of GNN and the opportunity of applying self-supervised learning techniques with GNN for VLSI optimization.

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              cover image ACM Conferences
              ICCAD '22: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design
              October 2022
              1467 pages
              ISBN:9781450392174
              DOI:10.1145/3508352
              Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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              Published: 22 December 2022

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              October 30 - November 3, 2022
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