Faithful system-level modeling is vital to design and technology pathfinding, and requires accurate representation of interconnects. In this study, Rent's rule is modernized to cater to advanced technology and design, and applied to derive a priori wirelength distribution models. Furthermore, a priori interconnect branching models are proposed to capture design constraints and their handling by the Electronic-Design-Automation tools. These interconnect branching models are embedded into the wirelength distribution models and validated against a suite of state-of-the-art commercial designs across technology nodes. Novel design-specific critical-path models are presented which capture trends in technology and microarchitecture, providing a reliable framework for future technology and design benchmarking.

Safety and real-time requirements of computer-based life-critical applications dramatically increase the complexity of the issues that need to be addressed during the design process. Typically quantitative analysis of such requirements are undertaken in an ad-hoc manner after the artifact has been produced. We propose a more systematic approach which uses adaptive search and multi-criteria decision analysis techniques to provide analytical support during the design-decision process.