CDS Donates Towards Multi-Patterned Lithography Tool Advancement
Si2 has announced that Cadence Design Systems (CDS) has donated to the OpenAccess community extensions which enable physical design tools to represent Multi-Patterned Technology (MPT).
Conventional photolithography cannot accurately pattern the geometries required for the 20nm process node and below.
Foundries have turned to various multi-patterning lithography techniques to address this issue. Shapes on the same layer manufactured with multi-patterned technology (MPT) are created through multiple exposures using multiple masks.
Physical design tools must be able to assign shapes on an MPT process layer to a specific mask so that they can check mask-based physical design rule rules to ensure that the design can be fabricated.
The technology contribution includes OpenAccess extensions which enable physical design tools to represent MPT information. The extensions support several features, such as, assigning mask "colors" to shapes and vias. To enable different instances of a design to be coloured differently, the colour of the shapes can be shifted on a per-layer basis.
Shapes and vias can also be locked to prevent hierarchical colour shifting of instances containing those objects. Colour information can be associated with track patterns to help routers efficiently assign colour. A detailed description of these extensions accompanies the contribution.
The contribution consists of source code and documentation of the OpenAccess extensions for the MPT "colors." Users are responsible for compiling this source code along with their application and any code they write to access and manipulate these oaAppDefs. The contributed code must be used with OpenAccess 22.43 or later.
Si2 is the one of the largest organisations of semiconductor, systems, EDA and manufacturing companies .
The institute is focused on the development and adoption of standards to improve the way integrated circuits are designed and manufactured, in order to speed time-to-market, reduce costs, and meet the challenges of sub-micron design.
Now in its 24th year, Si2 is positioned to enable timely collaboration through dedicated staff and a strong implementation focus driven by its member companies. Si2 represents nearly 100 companies involved in all parts of the silicon supply chain throughout the world.
