Robust and accurate hierarchical floorplanning with integrated global wiring

Many popular floorplanning methods are based on circuit partitioning. Besides effectiveness, their main advantages are the easy handling of flexible cells and the ability to incorporate global wiring in a straightforward manner. Several proven approaches to partitioning-based floorplanning and hierarchical global wiring are unified and enhanced with new ideas. The result is a robust algorithmic framework for floorplanning with integrated global wiring that incorporates a new efficient sizing method for cut trees of arbitrary degree, an accurate procedure for wiring area estimation, and a method to select a suitable floorplan topology using a systematic optimization procedure that integrates floorplanning and hierarchical wiring. Experiments with a prototype implementation called the FRODO-system prove the effectiveness of this approach