Using alternate routes for fail-over in a communication network involves maintaining a preferred route and an alternate route in a routing table and routing protocol messages according to the alternate route when the preferred route is unavailable. A first functional block having a phase logic circuit may be provided in a first area of a chip. Selectively placing data blocks and VMs comprises integrally placing the data and the VMs at selected nodes to lower data transfer network hops for a map-phase and a shuffle-phase of the map-reduce job upon execution by the VMs. The transistor allows the die real estate occupied by the transistor to be reduced while maintaining the coupling area between the floating and control gates.