Preventing Costly Iterations by Delivering SoC Congestion Aware Standard Cell Lib Using Pin Accessibility Checker
摘要
The standard cell layout development is done in the custom environment, and the standard cell abstracts are consumed at the SoC level. The issues in accessing pins of standard cells are discovered during the Place and Route (P&R) flow. Missing pin accessibility or routability is costlier in terms of effort and time, which can be overcome by using the Pin accessibility checker algorithm during layout development. This algorithm can dynamically check the accessibility of pins in standard cells in the development stage by running the SoC router. The algorithm can be used for checking pin accessibility using varied and flexible standard cell placement topologies, utilization, top metal layer, various voltages, and variable critical net configurations to use double-cut vias. Algorithm involves the creation of interoperable tech data, topology views, running router, and analysis of output views. This also enables designers to analyze different result reports and fix issues accordingly. This algorithm ensures that standard cells are clean by construction for pin accessibility during the library development phase itself.