Comment by xpct
3 hours ago
If that is so, would it be entirely to decrease search space for layout algorithms? I believe there isn't anything in the fabrication process that couldn't model diagonals.
I could see that square packing is more simple, but by shifting elements per row I don't see why it couldn't propagate at odd angles.
That's also my assumption. Place and route has to work out an NP hard problem on billions of wires.