DISTRIBUTED GENETIC ALGORITHMS FOR THE FLOORPLAN DESIGN PROBLEM

Floorplan design is an important stage in the VLSI design cycle. Designing a floorplan calls for arranging a given set of modules in the plane to minimize the weighted sum of area and wirelength measures. This paper presents a method to solve the floorplan design problem using distributed genetic algorithms. Distributed genetic algorithms, based on the paleontological theory of punctuated equilibria, offer a conceptual modification to the traditional genetic algorithms. Experimental results on several problem instances demonstrate the efficacy of our method, and point out the advantages of using this method over other methods, such as simulated annealing. Our method has performed better than the simulated annealing approach, both in terms of the average cost of the solutions found and the best-found solution, in almost all the problem instances tried.