Design Tools For Highly Regular Circuit Geometries

Silicon Technologies, Inc. proposes to revolutionize Semiconductor Deep sub micron design capabilities by creating a new design tool called PLUG (Physical Logic Using Gratings). PLUG will be used to design analog and digital systems at 45 nanometers and below that will improve the productivity of designers while using the highly regular manufacturing techniques where the interconnect is done using cutting and stitching of the gratings. PLUG design is innovative and saves multiple steps in the process of design. It starts from the physical layout and simultaneously produces the schematic in one step which differs from traditional design approaches where the design starts with the schematic and produces the layout after multiple steps. PLUG will contain a set of building blocks that have previously been laid out with predefined wiring and FILL. Software will be developed to allow a designer to place and route the schematics while simultaneously creating the layout. The software tools will also extract all stray elements which are added to the circuit as a result of interconnect, interaction between circuit elements and for FILL introduced by the manufacture. This extraction will allow the designer to view circuit waveforms as the design progresses.