Circuit placement on arbitrarily shaped regions using the self-organization principle

Abstract

An algorithm, called self-organization assisted placement (SOAP), for circuit placement in arbitrarily shaped regions, including two-dimensional (2-D) rectilinear regions, nonplanar surfaces of three-dimensional objects, and three-dimensional volumes, is presented. SOAP is based on the self-organizing which adjusts the weight of synapses connected to neurons such that topologically close neurons become sensitive to inputs that are physically similar. A standard cell placement method and a global placement method of macro cells using SOAP algorithm are described. Several examples showing the circuit placement on rectilinear regions, nonplanar surfaces, and 3-D volumes are shown. Experimental results on benchmark circuits show that the SOAP algorithm is competitive with the state-of-the-art algorithms even for the case of placement in a rectangular region, which is a special case of a 2-D rectilinear region. >