In this paper, we present an integrated approach to floorplanning and bus planning, i.e., bus-driven floorplanning (BDF). We are given a set of circuit blocks and the bus specifications (i.e., the net list of blocks for the buses). A feasible BDF solution is a placement of all circuit blocks such that each bus can be realized as a rectangular strip (horizontal or vertical) going through all the blocks connected by the bus. The objective is to determine a feasible BDF solution that minimizes floorplan area and total bus area. Our approach is based upon the sequence-pair floorplan representation. After a careful analysis of the relationship between bus ordering and block ordering in the floorplan represented by a sequence pair, we derive feasibility conditions on sequence pairs that give feasible BDF solutions. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our algorithm.
Hua Xiang, Xiaoping Tang, Martin D. F. Wong