In electronic design, place and route is a stage in the design of integrated circuits (ICs). The stage is mainly composed of a placement step followed by a routing step. The placement step determines the location of each active element of an IC in a generally limited amount of space. After the placement, the routing step determines all the desired connections and adds wires needed to properly connect the placed components. As semiconductor manufacturing processes continue to thrive and develop, routing has become more and more difficult and can be a major bottleneck in advanced nodes. With the number of cells in a typical design growing exponentially and the electrical properties of metal wires scaling poorly, the competition for preferred routing resources between various interconnects that must be routed is becoming more severe.