Dummy Fill Aware Buffer Insertion after Layer Assignment Based on an Effective Estimation Model

Yanming JIA  Yici CAI  Xianlong HONG  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E91-A   No.12   pp.3783-3792
Publication Date: 2008/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.12.3783
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: VLSI Design Technology and CAD
Keyword: 
VLSI,  buffer insertion,  physical design,  DFM,  dummy fill,  

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Summary: 
This paper studies the impact of dummy fill for chemical mechanical polishing (CMP)-induced capacitance variation on buffer insertion based on a virtual CMP fill estimation model. Compared with existing methods, our algorithm is more feasible by performing buffer insertion not in post-process but during early physical design. Our contributions are threefold. First, we introduce an improved fast dummy fill amount estimation algorithm based on [4], and use some speedup techniques (tile merging, fill factor and amount assigning) for early estimation. Second, based on some reasonable assumptions, we present an optimum virtual dummy fill method to estimate dummy position and the effect on the interconnect capacitance. Then the dummy fill estimation model was verified by our experiments. Third, we use this model in early buffer insertion after layer assignment considering the effects of dummy fill. Experimental results verified the necessity of early dummy fill estimation and the validity of our algorithm. Buffer insertion considering dummy fill during early physical design is necessary and our algorithm is promising.