MMP: a novel placement algorithm for combined macro block and standard cell layout design

In this paper, an efficient mixed-mode placement algorithm called MMP is presented for the high performance mixed block and standard cell designs. Our approach combines the well-known quadratic placement with bottom-up clustering, as well as the slicing partitioning strategy. This approach can account for macro blocks and standard cells simultaneously. Our method is both very efficient and effective, while it can be run very fast, too. We have tested our algorithm on a set of sample circuits from industry and consistently obtained excellent results.