Computing hexagonal Steiner trees using PCx [for VLSI]

Presents a branch and bound algorithm for computing a hexagonal Steiner minimum tree, where the fixed-topology problems are solved using PCx. Although currently it can only compute optimal solutions for small-sized instances, this algorithm makes it possible for researchers to compare heuristic solutions against optimal solutions for small-sized instances. Our min-min and max-min heuristics have also been shown to be good heuristic algorithms for computing hexagonal Steiner minimum trees, but not as good as the iterated I-Steiner heuristic. We have previously designed a linear time algorithm for computing an optimal layout of a minimum spanning tree, which can be viewed as a fast approximation to hexagonal Steiner minimum trees