Sliced Line Segments for Electronic Design Rule Verification
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of modern electronic design rules and the multitude of legal track patterns in electronic circuit designs make it impractical to manually verify compliance with design rules, especially when dealing with self-aligned double patterning processes and multiple legal widths, leading to tedious and inefficient design rule checks.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that utilize a computer to execute instructions for identifying a dictionary and sliced lines in electronic designs, reducing dimensionality, and dynamically checking shapes for compliance with design rules by partitioning and merging sliced line segments, and using a dictionary to verify shapes against legal track patterns.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If manual verification of design rules is performed, then design rule compliance can be checked, but the process becomes extremely tedious and inefficient due to the complexity of modern design rules and multitude of legal track patterns
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual mechanical verification processes with an automated computer-based system that uses algorithms to check design rule compliance. The system automatically identifies track patterns, retrieves legal patterns from a database, and verifies compliance without human intervention, thereby eliminating the time-consuming nature of manual verification while maintaining accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a digital representation (copy) of the design layout and processes this copy through automated algorithms. The system copies legal track patterns from a database and compares them against the actual design, enabling rapid verification without physically examining the original design, thus significantly reducing verification time.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the number of legal track widths is increased to meet design requirements, then design flexibility improves, but the complexity of verifying track pattern compliance becomes nearly impossible to perform manually
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary computer-based verification system that mediates between the complex design requirements and the verification process. This intermediary system manages the complexity by automatically handling the comparison between actual track patterns and legal patterns, allowing designers to use multiple track widths flexibly without being burdened by the verification complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces manual verification mechanics with automated computational mechanics. The system uses computer algorithms to efficiently handle the complexity arising from multiple legal track widths, performing rapid comparisons and compliance checks that would be impossible to perform manually, thus enabling design flexibility without proportional increase in verification complexity.
3Manufacturing precision
If self-aligned double patterning processes are implemented, then manufacturing precision improves, but additional constraints are created that increase the complexity of track pattern verification
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-defining and storing legal track patterns that inherently satisfy self-aligned double patterning constraints in a database. Before verification occurs, the system has already prepared the reference patterns with all necessary constraints embedded, so the actual verification process simply compares against these pre-validated patterns, managing complexity through advance preparation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary verification system that handles the complex constraints of self-aligned double patterning. This intermediary layer manages the additional verification requirements by automatically checking compliance with mask designation rules and alignment constraints, allowing the manufacturing process to achieve high precision without directly burdening the designer with the verification complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for checking or verifying shapes in electronic designs are disclosed. The method identifies a dictionary (if pre-existing) or determining the dictionary by creating the dictionary and reduces dimensionality of design data by using a sliced line. Shapes are transformed into sliced line segments along the sliced line. Dictionary entries for shapes are associated with corresponding sliced line segments, and the design is checked or verified using the sliced line segments and the associated dictionary entries rather than using two-dimensional shapes or geometric data. Sliced line segments may be further partitioned or merged. Non-conforming shapes corresponding to no tracks of track patterns are identified and determined whether violations of design rules or requirements may be resolved by one or more other shapes using the corresponding sliced line segments.