FPGA placement and routing using particle swarm optimization

Abstract

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are becoming increasingly important implementation platforms for digital circuits. One of the necessary requirements to effectively utilize the FPGA's fixed resources is an efficient placement and routing mechanism. This paper presents particle swarm optimization (PSO) for FPGA placement and routing. Preliminary results for the implementation of an arithmetic logic unit on a Xilinx FPGA show that PSO is a potential technique for solving the placement and routing problem.