Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Kenneth Mackie

Kenneth Ferguson

Gilles S C Lamant

David J Mallon

Gilles Lamant

Sravasti Gupta Nair

Christopher Stewart

In the context of electronic design automation and particularly circuit layout design software tools, systems and methods for incremental chaining of circuit devices (or, more generally, 'figures,' which can include instances and pins) permit user-interactive abutment and placement. Selection of one or more anchor figures highlights chaining candidates which can be automatically chained to the anchor figure(s) upon selection, as with a single mouse click. As compared to manual interactive abutment or automatic batch-mode chaining, incremental chaining offers improved usability, reduced manual effort, and the opportunity for user interaction as a chain is constructed, because the user is permitted interventions at any point in the chaining process for altering device parameters or characteristics.

Incremental chaining in the presence of anchored figures

In one embodiment a new method to address configuring a logical design and libraries of design elements with additional information is proposed that may be used to create a physical design from that logical design. Logical designs may be generic, while physical design libraries are normally targeted towards specific technology. Consequently, there can be a mapping from the cells in a logical library to cells which correspond to their implementation in a physical library. In one embodiment, annotations required to map from logical design to physical design may be stored in a separate design view. In one embodiment the user can modify the physical mapping attributes of cells, instances, and occurrences in the logical design and save the modifications back to the physical configuration view.

Methods and systems for physical hierarchy configuration engine and graphical editor

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Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Kenneth Mackie