US Patent 7146590 Congestion estimation for programmable logic devices

A method of estimating congestion for a programmable logic device can include calculating a number of fan-in paths for each resource in the programmable logic device and calculating a number of fan-out paths for each resource in the programmable logic device. For each resource of the programmable logic device, a number of paths having different path characteristics can be determined and a probability can be assigned thereto. One or more measures of congestion can be computed according to the determining step.