US 11,704,466 B2
Routing with soft-penalizing pixels on a found path
Matus Lipka, Kirkland, WA (US); and Kenneth Reneris, Kirkland, WA (US)
Assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed on Aug. 15, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/819,730.
Application 17/819,730 is a continuation of application No. 17/235,878, filed on Apr. 20, 2021, granted, now 11,461,529.
Prior Publication US 2022/0391573 A1, Dec. 8, 2022
Int. Cl. G06F 30/394 (2020.01); G06F 111/04 (2020.01)
CPC G06F 30/394 (2020.01) [G06F 2111/04 (2020.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An apparatus comprising:
one or more computer processors; and
a computer-readable storage medium having computer executable instructions that control the one or more computer processors to perform routing of circuit paths on a plurality of pixels associated with a circuit design, including computer executable instructions that control the one or more computer processors to:
identify, from among the plurality of pixels, a start pixel associated with a first integrated circuit (IC) device, wherein each pixel is associated with a penalty value that represents a number of rejected candidate paths that contain said each pixel;
identify, from among the plurality of pixels, an end pixel associated with a second IC device;
add pixels, from among the plurality of pixels, to a set of pixels that represents a candidate path between the start pixel and the end pixel, each added pixel being selected from among one or more pixels that are adjacent to a previously added pixel on the candidate path, the added pixel having a smallest penalty value among the one or more pixels; and
make a determination to reject or accept the candidate path based at least on electrical characteristics of the candidate path.