Force Directed Module Placement With Pin Consideration

This paper looks at developing a module placement algorithm by combining two well known force-directed graph drawing algorithms. It is in answer to the current gap of module placement tools within the electronic design automation community that this research is carried out. Whilst previous work has provided an introduction to the basis of the module placement flow followed by the authors, in this work, the additional feature of using pins to determine the placement has been looked into. Experimentation has shown that introduction of pins helps to generate better placements than without.