There have been FPGAs in the past which used the logic blocks for routing, including the Xilinx 6200. I think that was also the case for the Atmel AT40K FPGAs, but could be remembering wrong.
In fact, our project for the previous Google shuttle was an FPGA-like device which also routes data using logic cells. Here is an introduction to the idea:
https://github.com/fiberhood/MorphleLogic/blob/main/README_M...
It worked in simulation and the chip is currently scheduled to be shipped to us on September 6. There were 2 or 3 projects that were more conventional FPGAs.
The Morphie blob looks like a special case of a 4x4LUT. I'd be interested to know how the chips work out.
There are some common features, but also differences that makes them a bit hard to compare directly.
An academic project that takes yet another approach to this design space is:
Unfortunately, none of the links there go to anything, unless you have a username/password to sign in.
Here is a link to an "open access" copy of the 2010 RALA paper:
The idea is simple... a grid of 4x4 LUTs, each geographic neighbor has 1 bit in, and 1 bit out, there are 16 states, each with 4 outputs.
Turns out that this route-less FPGA can do some fairly amazing things, at least in theory. Now I intend to find out.
The really old blog I had about it - https://bitgrid.blogspot.com/