A Discrete PSO for Partitioning in VLSI Circuit

Circuit partitioning is a critical step in the physical design of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits. The interest in finding an optimal partitioning especially in VLSI design has been a hot issue in recent years. In VLSI circuit partitioning, the problem of obtaining a minimum cut is of prime importance. In this paper, a discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (DPSO) algorithm is proposed for the optimization of VLSI intercomnection (netlist) bipartition. Meanwhile, the corresponding evaluation function and the operators of crossover and mutation are designed. The algorithm is implemented to test ISCAS89 benchmark circuits. Compared with the traditional genetic algorithm (GA) with the same evaluation function and the same genetic operators concerned above, partitioning results by DPSO algorithm is markedly improved.