Thermal placement algorithm based on heat conduction analogy

A thermal force-directed placement algorithm, called TFPA, based on heat conduction analogy, is proposed for MCM design. TFPA begins with the transformation of the real substrate with chips into an unbounded substrate with an infinite number of chips. Then, each chip pushes every other chip with a force based on the heat conduction analogy. Thus, each chip will move in the direction of the force until the system achieves equilibrium. TFPA generates high quality placement results and maintains a cooler and uniform thermal profile, by distributing chip powers as evenly as possible. Unlike conventional force-directed algorithms, which might have serious component overlapping problems, TFPA places chips apart and only little or even no overlap occurs. In practice, the initial placements obtained by TFPA are very close to final placements.