Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

William H Kao

David Cooke Noice

Thanh Vuong

Xiaopeng Dong

Inhwan Seo

Gary Nunn

Ted Vucurevich

George J Gadelkarim

Disclosed is a method, system, and article of manufacture for a one-pass approach for implementing metal-fill for an integrated circuit. Also disclosed is a method, system, and article of manufacture for implementing metal-fill that is coupled to a tie-off connection. An approach that is disclosed comprises a method, system, and article of manufacture for implementing metal-fill having an elongated shape that corresponds to the length of whitespace. Also disclosed is the aspect of implementing metal-fill that matches the routing direction. Yet another disclosure is an implementation of a place & route tool incorporating an integrated metal-fill mechanism.

Place and route tool that incorporates a metal-fill mechanism

An improved approach for implementing metal fill on an electrical device without causing creating cross-coupling capacitance problems is disclosed. Timing aware metal fill insertion is performed to avoid or minimize cross-capacitance problems on the IC design. A cost may be assigned to different candidate metal fill shapes. The cost is associated with the expected effect upon timing requirements by the metal fill shape, with lower costs corresponding to lower expected impacts upon the timing requirements. To meet density requirements, lower cost metal fill shapes are inserted prior to higher cost metal fill shapes.

Method and system for implementing timing aware metal fill

A methodology is provided to perform noise analysis in the implementation stage of the design of an integrated circuit, and based upon analysis results, a floorplan may be adjusted or guard rings may be inserted to reduce the impact of digital switching noise upon noise sensitive circuits.

Method and apparatus for substrate noise aware floor planning for integrated circuit design

Method, system, and article of manufacture for implementing metal-fill with power or ground connection

Disclosed is an improved method and system for implementing metal fill for an integrated circuit design. When an engineering change order is implemented, the existing dummy metal fill geometries are initially ignored when modifying the layout, even if this results in shorts and/or other DRC violations. Once the ECO changes have been implemented, those violations caused by interaction between the changes and the metal fill are repaired afterwards.

Method and system for implementing metal fill

An improved method, system, and article of manufacture for reducing via failures is described. In one approach, additional vias or via cuts are inserted into an IC device to increase the number of cuts in a given area. The additional vias or via cuts are inserted until a sufficient via density level has been reached.

Method, system, and article of manufacture for reducing via failures in an integrated circuit design

Method, system, and article of manufacture for implementing metal-fill on an integrated circuit

A method for generating a physical integrated circuit layout, using the similarity between a template and the physical layout as a metric. This automated template-driven layout methodology creates a physical integrated circuit layout which approximates the specified template as closely as practicably possible. The similarity of the positioning of circuit elements in a physical layout is improved with regard to the positioning of those same circuit elements in a template. The circuit elements' placement is incrementally improved by attaching a cost to each placement, with a lower cost reflecting a better match between circuit element placement in the physical layout and the template. Fuzzy logic concepts are employed to determine the cost of a given layout.

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

William H Kao