Sequential and Parallel Meta-Heuristics for Solving the Single Row Routing Problem

The design of multi-layer printed circuit boards is vital in the construction of complex electronic systems. Wire routing is a crucial step in the overall design process, which can be decomposed into a number of single row routing (SRR) problems. This paper proposes an approach to solve the SRR problem based on parallel meta-heuristics. The development of this technique involves the design of an encoding strategy that allows all possible routings to be uniquely represented and the derivation of cost functions that maximizes the quality of the developed solutions. Further, parallelization of the proposed approach is attempted to improve the computational efficiency. The different stages of the development are backed by experiments to show the pros and cons of the sequential and parallel implementations.