Goal orientated slicing enumeration through shape function clipping

Two new methods for efficient enumeration of slicing structures useful for macro cell and sea-of-gates final placement are presented. Contrary to existing approaches a further preorder traversal of the slicing tree is added, which allows elimination of unnecessary shapes in an early design phase. Applying this look ahead strategy, memory and computation time requirements have been reduced drastically. Better placements have been achieved by using the saved resources to enlarge the search space for enumeration