An efficient placement method for large standard-cell and sea-of-gates designs

A fast placement algorithm is presented for large standard-cell and sea-of-gates placement problems. The time complexity of the algorithm is O(n log/sup 2/ n). In comparison with a state of the art conventional placement and routing tool it yields more than 10% smaller layouts with significantly better timing characteristics. The method underlying this algorithm uses a quadratic cost function of the wire length and has a wider applicability than existing methods. The authors expect that with this algorithm high quality placements upto 100000 cells can be obtained.<
>