Timothy Normand Miller wrote: > There are no direct solutions to NP-complete problems.
I did know that. :-) > And this is > demonstrated by the fact that everyone's P&R algorithm sucks in some > way or another. We can apply knowledge, randomization, hill-climbing, > and other kinds of search to the problem, but there will always be > limits to how well we can do. My point is that AI methods have been used successfully to solve similar problems. There's a decent chance that similar strategies would work here, even if the similarity is at a fairly abstract level. > For FOSS, a major obstacle is that the problem isn't interesting > enough to enough people, and the results aren't glitzy enough. Well, maybe. To me, it sounds like the sort of thing a CS or CSE major could get quite excited about. In fact, if I were 20 years younger and still in college, I'd probably tackle it. Heck, if somebody paid me a stipend, I'd work on it now. It sounds like a great learning project in AI (which I've been self-studying for a few years now, but never really applied myself to). Of course, I'd be starting from zilch understanding of this particular problem. >>Is the >>floorplanning algorithm for an FPGA really all that different from the >>ones used for PCB-layout? > > It's completely different. Yes, there are superficial similarities > and certainly some deep ones, but the problems are defined in > radically different ways. I went into this for one of the interview > questions. Yeah. Of course, what you said made the PCB problem sound *harder*, not easier. >>Anyway, this could be at about the level of a university semester >>project, IMHO. > > Pieces of it could be. A better FPGA P&R algorithm could be a Ph.D. > dissertation. PhD candidates do exist. ;-) For our purposes, of course, "better" is nice but not obligatory. I don't imagine anyone expects a free synthesis tool (right term?) to beat a proprietary one on its first outing. We'd just expect it to "work", right? Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
