A VLSI floorplanner based on 'balloon' expansion

A novel floorplanning method is presented that models blocks as rectangular 'balloons', which are gradually expanded to determine their shapes and placement. Unlike the existing approaches, which assume the floorplan to be a slicing structure or which never handle fixed-shaped blocks, this method can handle fixed-shaped blocks as well as variable-shaped blocks on a general (non-slicing) layout structure. Experimental results show that the proposed method works effectively and gives an accurate estimate of chip area with only 3 to 6 percent difference from final layout, especially when the fixed- and variable-shaped blocks are mixed.<
>