I&#x27;ve finished reading the links. The first one was great. Thanks, I learnt something.  It&#x27;s not my field, but I&#x27;m vaguely familiar with the workflow, having friends who design ASICs, work at Xilinx, etc. I&#x27;ve encountered some algorithms in advanced compiler texts.<p>But what I was specifically curious about was applications of stochastic optimization to EDA workflow. It sounded like you&#x27;d seen papers on that topic.<p>My interest is purely in applications of stochastic optimization. I&#x27;m not about to jump into EDA.