A general purpose, multiple-way partitioning algorithm

Multiple-way partitioning is an important extension of two-way partitioning as it provides a more natural and direct model for many partitioning applications. In this paper, we discuss several objective functions derived from such an extension and propose an iterative improvement algorithm to solve the multiple-way partitioning problem. The algorithm proceeds in three phases. The first phase employs a recursive ratio-cut scheme to group highly connected subcircuits into clusters. The second phase performs iterative improvement on the clustered circuit using a Dew net-based move model and a Primal-Dual refinement procedure. The third phase is the same as the second phase except that the iterative improvement is done on the original circuit. Experiments show good results in all tested cases.< >