Placement based design cells injection into an integrated circuit design

An EDA tool is provided with the ability to re-express a design cell of an IC design in terms of placements of a number of newly formed intervening constituent design cells, the IC design having a number of hierarchically organized placements of design cells. The new intervening constituent design cells is formed in accordance with a number of metrics profiling placements of the original constituent design cells of the design cell. The EDA tool is also provided with the ability to determine the metrics. In one embodiment, the metrics are weights reflective of at least edge placement activities associated with row/column coordinates of the design cell. The EDA tool determines these weights associated with the row/column coordinates, and then uses the determined weights to select a subset of the row/column coordinates as cut line coordinates to logically partition the design cell into a number of regions. Finally, the EDA tool selectively groups contents of the selected design cell to form the new intervening constituent design cells based on the contents' relations to the formed regions. In one embodiment, the EDA tool is a design verification tool for use to verify the IC design prior to fabrication.