5 Conclusion

New spectral methods for ratio cut partitioning and clustering. A general purpose multi-way partitioning, Proc. We introduced a new natural metric, Via-Count, to better estimate inter-partition delays for evaluating partitioning solutions. We presented K-VIA-FM, an algorithm that iteratively improve solutions for the new metric. We compared the performance of K-VIA-FM with other algorithms, both with respect to the new metric as well as the number of nets cut. In fact, our results show that in multi-partitioning cases, minimizing the number of vias actually reduced the number of nets cut. Future work will explore network ow based approaches to optimize the new metric. Also, we hope to use signal directionality information to incorporate a better delay estimating gain computation model into the partitioning phase. Another potential direction is to compare actual routing results when using existing partitioning algorithms against K-VIA-FM. Fast spectral methods for ratio cut partitioning and clustering.