Global lower bounds for the VLSI macrocell floorplanning problem using semidefinite optimization

Abstract

We investigate the application of semidefinite programming (SDP) techniques to the VLSI macrocell floorplanning problem. We propose a mixed-integer SDP formulation of the problem which leads to new SDP relaxations. This approach has been implemented and we report global lower bounds for some MCNC benchmark macrocell problems.