Electrically-driven retargeting for nanoscale layouts

Abstract

Scaling into the nanometer regime with limited lithographic capabilities leads to printability issues during manufacturing. Retargeting has been previously identified as a cost-effective way to improve layout process window. However, existing approaches such as rule-based retargeting are not scalable, while proposed methods like model-based retargeting cannot be used on electrically critical structures. In this paper, we propose to perform electrically-aware modifications of the physical design to improve layout printability with minimum design perturbation. Results on sample 32nm layouts demonstrate that we can obtain required control over delay variability and yield resulting from lithographic variations with 2.7X lower wire delay perturbation compared to existing retargeting techniques. © 2011 IEEE.