An evolutionary strategy for the global placement of macro cells

An approach implemented as a program called EVAN for the global placement of macro cells is presented. EVAN consists of four major subprocedures: incremental growth, reorientation, recalculation of the net and module positions, and diffusion of the circuit modules. Unlike previous approaches such as min-cut or force-directed relaxation (FDR)-based techniques, where the shape, size, and orientation of the circuit modules are considered too late (thus severely disturbing the already obtained distribution), EVAN considers the circuit connectivity, size, shape, and orientation of the modules simultaneously in an evolutionary fashion. In the benchmark data examples, it is shown that the amount of intermodule overlaps was significantly reduced, making the remaining packing process a much easier task