Module placement with boundary constraints using the sequence-pair representation

In VLSI module placement, it is very practical to consider placing some modules along the pre-specified boundaries of the chip so that the modules are easier to be connected to certain I/O pads. In this paper, we study the module placement problem where some modules have boundary constraints, and present a simulated annealing based algorithm that represents each placement topology by a sequence-pair. The major contribution of our algorithm is that a feasible placement is always obtainable. Our algorithm has been implemented, and its effectiveness is supported by the encouraging experimental results.