A fast multilayer general area router for MCM designs

The authors report on the development of an efficient multilayer general area router as an alternative to the three-dimensional (3-D) maze router for solving the multilayer multichip module (MCM) routing problem. The router, named SLICE, is independent of net ordering, requires much shorter computation time, and uses fewer vias. A key step in the router is to compute a maximum non-crossing bipartite matching, which is solved optimally in O(n log n) time where n is the number of possible connections. The router was tested on a number of examples, including two MCM designs. Compared to a 3-D maze router, SLICE is four times faster and uses 28% fewer vias. SLICE can successfully produce solutions for large MCM routing examples where 3-D maze routers fail due to insufficient memory