Techniques for designing integrated circuits (ICs) with optimization at register transfer level (RTL) amongst multiple ICs are described herein. According to one embodiment of the invention, a hierarchical resource estimation is performed based on a technology independent register transfer level (RTL) netlist, which is to be partitioned between multiple ICs. Based on the estimation, the RTL netlist is partitioned between the multiple ICs. In response to the partition and the estimation, immediate feedback information is provided to a user.