Area minimization for general floorplans

Two methods for the area minimization problem in floorplanning are presented. These methods can be viewed as generalizations of Stockmeyer´s algorithm in the sense that they reduce to Stockmeyer´s algorithm for floorplans that are slicing. The present methods can also be applied to general floorplans. Compared with the branch-and-bound algorithm, which is enumerative in nature and does not have any nontrivial performance bound for general floorplans, these methods are probably better than exhaustive methods for all the floorplans studied.<>