Abstract
A representation scheme for a rip-up and rerouter is presented. The status of the routing region is represented as a four-dimensional matrix. Rip-up and re-route operations are emulated as matrix subtractions and additions, respectively. The quality of a routing result can be measured by performing a few simple matrix operations. A rip-up and reroute switch-box/channel router called SILK, using a simulated evolution technique, has been implemented on the basis of this representation scheme. Experimental results showed that SILK outperformed WEAVER, the most successful switch-box router to date, in both quality and speed aspects, for all the classical benchmarks available.