Electronic Design Automation

11.5. Global Placement: Analytical Approach

The basic idea of the analytical approach is to express the cost function and the constraints as analytical functions of the coordinates of the modules. Then the placement problem is transformed into a mathematical program. To illustrate this approach, an exact, but impractical, formulation is first presented in Section 11.5.1. Practical analytical placement techniques can be classified as quadratic and nonquadratic, which are presented in Sections 11.5.2 and 11.5.3, respectively. Note that analytical placement techniques generally treat both standard cells and macros in the same manner. (Sometimes, special techniques are used to handle large macros to improve wirelength or to make legalization easier, ...