Using unused wires on very-large-scale integration chips for power supply decoupling

Abstract

Using unused wires on VLSI chips for power supply decoupling including generating a VLSI chip design by: identifying floating wires in a VLSI chip; placing a via at each intersection between each floating wire and a power rail; determining a number of design rule violations for each via at each intersection; resolving the design rule violations for each via not on a major power rail; resolving the design rule violations for each via on a major power rail after resolving the design rule violations for each via not on a major power rail; after resolving the design rule violations for each via on a major power rail, identifying floating wires without a via; and for each floating wire without a via, identify an intersection with a least number of design rule violations and resolve the number of design rule violations by removing adjacent vias on adjacent wires.

Description

BACKGROUNDField of the Invention[0001]The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for using unused wires on very-large-scale integration chips for power supply decoupling.Description of Related Art[0002]The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input / output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that ar...

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