Circuit partitioning under capacity and I/O constraints

This paper proposes an effective method for solving multi-way circuit partitioning problems under capacity (size) and I/O pin count constraints. The objective is the total net cuts among partitions. We first linearize the quadratic objective function into a linear function, then we assign circuit components sequentially according to this linear function while avoiding capacity or I/O violations. The resulting assignment (partitioning) is used to compute another linear cost function and the sequential assignment is repeated. This process can be iterated for a fix number of times to get a good final solution. Experimental results for several benchmark circuits are also given to demonstrate its effectiveness