A matrix synthesis approach to thermal placement

— In this paper, we consider the thermal placement problem for gate arrays. We introduce a new combinatorial optimization problem, matrix synthesis problem (MSP), to model the thermal placement problem. Given a list of mnmnmn nonnegative real numbers and an integer ttt, MSP constructs a mmm222nnn matrix out of the given numbers such that the maximum sum among all ttt222ttt submatrices is minimized. We show that MSP is NP-complete and present several provably good approximation algorithms for the problem. We also demonstrate that our thermal placement strategy is flexible enough to allow simultaneous consideration of other objectives such as wiring.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: ISPD
• Authors: Chris C. N. Chu, D. F. Wong
• Keywords: Combinatorial Optimization Problem, Hardware, ISPD 1997, Matrix Synthesis Problem, Thermal Placement Problem