Marvell International Limited

Marvell Asia Pte., Ltd.

Heng Lan Lau

Manjunatha Govinda Prabhu

Vikrant Kumar Chauhan

Shawn Walsh

A method includes accessing, from a memory, a schematic diagram of a circuit that depicts components of the circuit and, connected to one or more of the components, single-pin imaginary devices associated with group properties of the components. The method further includes automatically generating a design layout for the circuit based on the schematic diagram. The design layout comprises shapes representing the components and, on each shape representing a specific component that is connected to a single-pin imaginary device, a specific group label corresponding to a specific group property of the specific component. Placement of the shapes within the design layout is group label dependent. Accessing of the schematic diagram and the automatically generating of the design layout are performed by a layout generator tool executed by a processor of a computer-aided design system.

Integrated circuit methods using single-pin imaginary devices

In the disclosed design systems and methods, a schematic diagram includes nets and, connected to at least some nets, single-pin first and second imaginary devices. On any given net, a first imaginary device is associated with a tracking group property of the net (where nets in the same tracking group are in-phase) and a second imaginary device is associated with a voltage property of the net. A design layout generated based on the schematic diagram includes: net shapes representing the nets and, on net shapes that represent nets connected to the imaginary devices, tracking group and voltage labels corresponding to the tracking group and voltage properties. Net shape placement within the design layout and design rule checking are performed according to design rules that dictate placing net shapes with the same tracking group label together and further dictate minimum allowable spacing requirements depending upon the tracking group and voltage labels.

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Port Townsend, WA, United States of America

Heng Lan Lau