Large-scale placement by grid-warping

Grid-warping is a new placement algorithm based on a strikingly simple idea: rather than move the gates to optimize their location, we elasticaily deform a model of the 2-D chip surface on which the gates have been roughly placed, "stretching" it until the gates arrange themselves to our liking. Put simply: we move the grid, not the gates. Deforming the elastic grid is a surprisingly simple, low-dimensional nonlinear optimization, and augments a traditional quadratic formulation. A preliminary implementation, WARP1, is already competitive with most recently published placers, e.g., placements that average 4% better wirelength, 40% faster than GORDIAN-L-DOMINO.