A general greedy channel routing algorithm

A general approach for the channel routing problem is presented as a framework for a class of heuristic routing algorithms. The algorithm is shown to possess a backtracking capability that increases the chance of completing the routing with a minimum number of tracks. Since the concepts described are general, they can be applied to other channel problems, such as switchbox routing, three-layer routing, and multilayer routing, or even to the overlap model, with only a few modifications. It is shown that track-oriented greedy algorithms can be modified to solve other channel routing problems. As examples, the algorithm is modified to solve the Manhattan switch-box problem and channel routing problems in the overlap and knock-knee models. Preliminary results show that the modified algorithms have good performance and show strong potential to outperform existing algorithms. Applying the algorithm MCRP-ROUT to the benchmark Deutsch´s difficult problem and Burstein´s difficult problem, routing solutions of 19 tracks and six tracks, respectively, were obtained