From what I saw in the rebuttal papers, the Google cost-function is wirelength based. You can still get good TNS from that if your timing is very simplistic -- or if you choose your benchmark carefully.

They optimize using a fast heuristic based on wirelength, congestion, and density, but they evaluate with full P&R. It is definitely interesting that they get good timing without explicitly including it in their reward function!

Yeah; it means the heuristic they use is a good one

Interesting == Suspicious? I think this is a big red flag to those in the know.

The odd thing is that they don't compute timing in RL, but claim that somehow TNS and WNS improved. Does anyone believe this? With five circuits and three wins, the results are a coin toss.