Two-dimensional placement method based on divide-and-replacement

In VLSI layout design, the two-dimensional component placement problem is one of the important problems. The Simulated Quenching (SQ) method has been proposed as a one-dimensional placement method. SQ can find a solution comparable to that of SA with shorter runtime. It is considered that the performance of SQ depends on (i) division of the original problem into subproblems, (ii) modification of subproblems, and (iii) approach to the modified subproblems. We propose several two-dimensional placement methods based on the above considerations. Experiments confirm that some of our methods find solutions comparable to those of SA with shorter runtime.