A Hybrid Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Nonslicing VLSI Floorplanning

Abstract

Floorplanning in very large scale integrated-circuit (VLSI) design is the first phase in the process of designing the physical layout of a chip. This makes the floorplanning problem of paramount importance, since it determines the performance, size, yield, and reliability of VLSI chips . From the computational point of view, the VLSI floorplanning is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we present a hybrid simulated annealing algorithm (HSA) for nonslicing VLSI floorplanning. The HSA uses a new greedy method to construct an initial B*-tree, a new operation on the B*-tree to explore the search space, and a novel bias search strategy to balance global exploration and local exploitation. Experimental results on Microelectronic Center of North Carolina (MCNC) benchmarks show that the HSA can quickly produce optimal or nearly optimal solutions for all the tested problems.