Genetic Algorithms vs. Simulated Annealing: A Comparison of Approaches for Solving the Circuit Partitioning Problem

An important stage in circuit design is placement where components are assigned to physical locations on a chip A popular contemporary method for placement is the use of simulated annealing While this approach has been shown to produce good placement solutions recent work in genetic algorithms has produced promising results The purpose of this study is to determine which approach will result in better placement solutions A simpli ed model of the placement problem circuit partitioning was tested on three circuits with both a genetic algorithm and a simulated annealing algorithm When compared with simulated annealing the genetic algorithm was found to produce similar results for one circuit and better results for the other two circuits Based on these results genetic algorithms may also yield better results than simulated annealing when applied to the placement problem