Guardian DRC Design Rule Checker. Technical Description

Transcription

1 Guardian DRC Design Rule Checker Technical Description

2 Outline of Presentation Overview Guardian DRC Process/Data Flow Friendly User Interface Start DRC Rule Script Multi-thread DRC Rules Processing Hierarchical DRC Error Report Visualization of DRC errors Real-Time DRC Conclusion - 2 -

3 What is Guardian? Guardian DRC/LVS/LPE Physical Verification products provide interactive and batch mode verification of analog, digital, and mixed signal IC designs Seamlessly integrated with Silvaco schematic capture and layout editor, these tools efficiently perform design rule checks (DRC), layout vs. schematic (LVS) comparisons, and layout parameter extractions (LPE) - 3 -

4 Key Features of Guardian DRC High-speed layer generation and check operations facilitated by features such as effective memory management and advanced proprietary algorithms Multi-thread DRC rules processing Friendly user interface for DRC running and inspecting of results Hierarchical error reporting Full chip DRC and local DRC (Area DRC) Real-time DRC for on-line checking of layout during editing Compatible with rule sets of other DRC systems - 4 -

5 Key Features of Guardian DRC Spacing and antenna rule check operations Support for connectivity/node information for layout objects Convenient hierarchical database of DRC results Multiple modes of graphical visualization of errors Import and export error report from/to text format Support for all design methodologies and process technologies Support for all-angle, 45 degree and 90 degree Programmable and user-defined DRC Interactive and batch mode operation 64-bit platform - 5 -

6 Guardian DRC Process/Data Flow Foreign Rule Sets Translate Customer s DRC Rule Set DRC Batch Mode Expert Layout Editor GDSII Rule Error File Load IC Layout Input DRC Rules Guardian DRC Design Rule Checker Load Errors for Inspection Import Errors Output Rule Errors GDSII Rule Errors EDB Error Data Base Export Errors Text Rule Error File Text Rule Error File - 6 -

7 Interactive Guardian DRC Easy to Use GUI Main Menu Layer Map Error Visualization DRC toolbar - 7 -

8 DRC Commands Defined Interactively Resize Window Boolean Operation Select Window Design Bar Layers Map Layer Operation Check Operation - 8 -

9 Preparing DRC Rule Script Run 1 Load or create IC layout in Expert Layout Editor 2 Load DRC Script Panel Window 3 Load DRC Script - 9 -

10 Launching DRC Rule Script 4 Set or change preferences, which manage DRC script run 5 Start DRC script

11 Multi-Thread DRC Rules Processing 1 2 Graph of Dependency between DRC Rule Operations Parallel mode DRC setup. This Setup Dialog informs an user how many processors are on his computer. An user has a following choice: set automatically or manually number of threads to process DRC Rule set. Threads / Processors 3 Queue of Operations to Process Compiling Results of Operations

12 Hierarchical DRC Error Report Dialog to select Run of DRC deck Dialog to select Check operation from DRC deck Layout Tree with marked cells containing error(s) Dialog for selecting error to inspect

13 Visualization of DRC Errors Guardian DRC supplies convenient tools to visualize, inspect and handle DRC rule errors

14 Real-Time DRC Available in Expert Layout Editor If an user sets up Real-Time DRC rule set then during every editing layout, changes will be checked against these rules Real-Time error indicator Real-Time DRC bar (Error Navigator)

15 Conclusion Seamless integration with Expert Layout Editor provides on-line rule checking during creating/editing IC layout Enables users to make rapid iterative verification runs using direct invocation from Expert Layout Editor Provides high-speed logic and geometric DRC operations Convenient graphical user interface to inspect and correct design rule errors Convenient tool to build derived layers Available on Windows, Linux, Solaris Unix