METHOD FOR PARTITIONING OF CONNECTED CIRCUIT COMPONENTS BEFORE PLACEMENT IN ONE OR MORE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

In a method for partitioning components of an integrated circuit into clusters in preparation for placement of the clusters onto an integrated circuit, a connectivity cost is assigned to every pair of connected components. Then, beginning with a pair of connected components with a lowest assigned connectivity cost and proceeding to a pair of connected components with a highest assigned connectivity cost, the components are placed in a cluster tree so that when merging cluster tree nodes, a cluster tree node with a higher connectivity cost is made a parent cluster tree node of a cluster tree node with a lower connectivity cost. The cluster tree may then traversed to partition the components into clusters. The clusters can be optimized by moving individual components to clusters when such a move results in a lower incremental connectivity cost. Once the components have been partitioned into clusters, the clusters of components may be placed on an integrated circuit.