Vlsi Placement And Global Routing Using Simulated Annealing The Springer International Series In Engineering And Computer Science

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The author is a computer scientist who has worked in the area of VLSI placement and routing. He has a B.E.E. from the University of Minnesota and an S.M. from M.I.T. He switched to computer-aided design in 1981 and was impressed by the work of Scott Kirkpatrick, Dan Gelatt, and Mario Vecchi of the IBM Thomas 1.

Watson Research Center. He worked on an island-style gate array placement problem and his implementation is presented in the Appendix of this book. He was struck by the effect of a nonzero temperature on what otherwise appears to be a random interchanges algorithm.

From my B.E.E degree at the University of Minnesota and right through my S.M. degree at M.I.T., I had specialized in solid state devices and microelectronics.

I made the decision to switch to computer-aided design (CAD) in 1981, only a year or so prior to the introduction of the simulated annealing algorithm by Scott Kirkpatrick, Dan Gelatt, and Mario Vecchi of the IBM Thomas 1. Watson Research Center. Because Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, my UC Berkeley advisor, had been a consultant at IBM, I re ceived a copy of the original IBM internal report on simulated annealing approximately the day of its release.

Given my background in statistical mechanics and solid state physics, I was immediately impressed by this new combinatorial optimization technique. As Prof. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli had suggested I work in the areas of placement and routing, it was in these realms that I sought to explore this new algorithm.

My flJ'St implementation of simulated annealing was for an island-style gate array placement problem. This work is presented in the Appendix of this book. I was quite struck by the effect of a nonzero temperature on what otherwise appears to be a random in terchange algorithm.