Timing-driven Placement Based on Partitioning with Dynamic Cut-net Control *

This paper presents a partitioning-based, timing-driven placement algorithm. The partitioning step itself is timing-driven and based on solving a quadratic programming problem iteratively. The placement algorithm does not rely on interleaved timing calculations, which tend to be inaccurate. Instead, it achieves the desired result by controlling the number of times that a path in the circuit can be cut. In addition to the cutting constraint, a pre-locking mechanism and timing-aware terminal propagation are developed and integrated into the flow. The detailed placement step is formulated as a constrained quadratic program and solved efficiently. Results show improvements of 23.41 % on average compared to another timingdriven placement system Timing-QUAD and significant improvements over Eisenmann’s placement algorithm. 1