One variable stochastic simulated annealing channel router

In the layout design of VLSI chips, channel routing is one of the key problems. The problem is to route a specified net list between two rows of terminals with two-layers. Nets are routed with horizontal segments on one layer and vertical segments on the other. Connections between two layers are made through via holes. In this paper, we propose the "one-variable stochastic simulated annealing channel router" based on the mean field approximation in order to overcome the difficulties in evaluating the spin average value expressed by the integral in such a network. Some results are presented. Experimental result shows that this method finds optimal solutions with some example problems, and is a promising method in channel routing.