An incremental floorplanner

One of the foremost problems in physical design for deep-submicron circuits is the need for estimates that depend on future decisions. Estimation of area, timing, and coupling are required. We propose a novel floorplanner, with a new wiring metric, which can be updated quickly in small increments. This provides tools with a way to influence the floorplan as they make changes without large running time penalty. We provide experimental results that show the incremental approach to be generally 5 times faster than full floorplanning while maintaining good estimates