A Metaheuristic Algorithm for VLSI Floorplanning Problem

Floorplanning plays an important role within the physical design method of very large Scale Integrated (VLSI) chips. It’s a necessary design step to estimate the chip area before the optimized placement of digital blocks and their interconnections. Since VLSI floorplanning is an NP-hard problem, several improvement techniques were adopted to find optimal solution. In this paper, a hybrid algorithm which is genetic algorithm combined with music-inspired Harmony Search (HS) algorithm is employed for the fixed die outline constrained floorplanning, with the ultimate aim of reducing the full chip area. Initially, B*-tree is employed to come up with the first floorplan for the given rectangular hard modules and so Harmony Search algorithm is applied in any stages in genetic algorithm to get an optimum solution for the economical floorplan. The experimental results of the HGA algorithm are obtained for the MCNC benchmark circuits

A Lion’s Pride Inspired Algorithm for VLSI Floorplanning

The complexity of any integrated circuit pushes the researchers to optimize the various parameters in the design process. Usually, the Nondeterministic Polynomial problems in the design process of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) are considered as a Single Objective Optimization Problem (SOOP). However, due to the increasing demand for the multi-criterion optimization, researchers delve up on Multi-Objective Optimization methodologies to solve a problem with multiple objectives. Moreover, it is evident from the literature that biologically inspired algorithm works very well in optimizing a Multi-Objective Optimization Problem (MOOP). This paper proposes a new Lion’s pride inspired algorithm to solve any MOOP. The methodologies mimic the traits of a Lion which always strives to become the Pride Lion. The Algorithm was tested with VLSI floorplanning problem wherein the area and dead space are the objectives. The algorithm was also tested with several standard test problems. The tabulated results justify the ruggedness of the proposed algorithm in solving any MOOP.