A quadratic metric with a simple solution scheme for initial placement

For the initial placement problem a nets-as-points model provides a quadratic cost metric which when minimized localizes the gates. Fixed constraints are added to the cost function so that a minimum is guaranteed to exist, and can be obtained by means of a simple iterative solution. The initial placement is obtained in near linear time. An annular snap-to-grid heuristic completes the initial placement. The nets-as-points metric is shown to produce desirable results.