Sharp-Looking Geometric Partitioning

A new technique, named SHARP, is presented for the partitioning of VLSI integrated circuits. SHARP is a hillclimbing heuristic that is designed to be incorporated into a partitioning-based placement algorithm. Its important features include a geometric decomposition of the layout surface into a ‘‘#''-shaped region; a multi-objective function that more accurately represents wire usage than the standard min-cut criterion, and extensive use of Steiner trees. A series of experiments demonstrates that the SHARP technique produce very high quality partitions.
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Bapat, S, and J Cohoon. "Sharp-Looking Geometric Partitioning." University of Virginia Dept. of Computer Science Tech Report (1990).