Module placement with pre-placed modules using the B*-tree representation

In this paper, we study the problem of module placement with pre-placed modules, and present a novel method that extends the B*-tree representation to solve the problem. The method restricts each pre-placed module to be placed at its pre-specified location all the time and uses the B*-tree representation to generate the locations for the remaining modules. Re-positioning techniques are added into the method to eliminate any overlapping between modules. The method is incorporated into a simulated annealing process and its effectiveness is demonstrated by the experimental results.