On the Relative Placement and the Transportation Problem for Standard-Cell Layout

A new two-phased method for the simultaneous placement of modules for standard-cell layout is presented. In phase one, a relative placement is calculated by application of an iterative solution method taking advantage of net-list sparsity. A fast algorithm is derived from a new formulation of the problem. In addition, signal weights and pin coordinates are considered. In phase two, different-sized modules are assigned to physical locations by solving a transportation problem.