electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together ...

, a floorplan of an integrated circuit is a schematics representation of tentative placement of its major functional blocks. In modern electronic design process floorplans are created during the floorplanning design stage, an early stage in the hierarchical approach to

integrated circuit design Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic componen ...

. Depending on the design methodology being followed, the actual definition of a floorplan may differ.

Floorplanning

Floorplanning takes in some of the geometrical constraints in a design. Here are some examples: * bonding pads for off-chip connections (often using

wire bonding Wire bonding is the method of making interconnections between an integrated circuit (IC) or other semiconductor device and its integrated circuit packaging, packaging during Fabrication (semiconductor), semiconductor device fabrication. Altho ...

) are normally located at the circumference of the chip; *

line driver A line driver is an electronic amplifier circuit designed for driving a load such as a transmission line. The amplifier's output impedance may be matched to the characteristic impedance of the transmission line. Line drivers are commonly used ...

s often have to be located as close to bonding pads as possible; * chip area is therefore in some cases given a minimum area in order to fit in the required number of pads; * areas are clustered in order to limit data paths thus frequently featuring defined structures such as cache RAM, multiplier,

barrel shifter