An efficient partitioning method for very large-scale standard cell placement with pre-designed macros

In this paper, an efficient partitioning algorithm for mixed-mode placement, extended-MFFC-based partitioning, is presented. It combines the bottom-up clustering and the top-down partitioning together, using the algorithm of extended-MFFC-based clustering and the partitioning package of HMETIS. To do this, we can not only cluster cells considering logic dependency but also partition them aiming at min-cut. Good experimental results prove that extended-MFFC-based partitioning performs well in mixed-mode placement with big pre-designed blocks. We also give the comparison between HMETIS and our partitioning to prove its remarkable function in mixed-mode placement.