New placement and global routing algorithms for standard cell layouts

New placement and global routing algorithms are proposed for standard cell layouts. The placement algorithm, called the hierarchical clustering with min-cut exchange (HCME), is effective to avoid being trapped in local optimum solutions. The global routing algorithm does not route the nets one by one and therefore the results are independent of the net order and channel order. In this algorithm, channel width is minimized under a cost function, in which the trade-off between the minimization of net-lengths and the minimization of the number of tracks is considered. These algorithms are simple and highly efficient. This is confirmed by computational experiments.