Detecting context sensitive hot spots in standard cell libraries

Jen-Yi Wuu; Fedor G. Pikus; Andres Torres; Malgorzata Marek-Sadowska

doi:10.1117/12.814316

12 March 2009 Detecting context sensitive hot spots in standard cell libraries

Jen-Yi Wuu, Fedor G. Pikus, Andres Torres, Malgorzata Marek-Sadowska

Proceedings Volume 7275, Design for Manufacturability through Design-Process Integration III; 727515 (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.814316
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2009, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Advances in lithography patterning have been the primary driving force in microelectronics manufacturing processes. With the increasing gap between the wavelength of the optical source and feature sizes, the accompanying strong diffraction effects have a significant impact on the pattern fidelity of on-silicon layout shapes. Layout patterns become highly sensitive to those context shapes lying within the optical radius of influence. Under such optical proximity effects, manufacturability hot spots such as necking and bridging may occur. Studies have shown that manufacturability hot spots are pattern dependent in nature and should be considered at the design stage [1]. It is desirable to detect these hot spots as early as possible in the design flow to minimize the costs for correction. In this work, we propose a hot spot prediction method based on a support vector machine technique. Given the location of a hot spot candidate and its context patterns, the proposed method is capable of efficiently predicting whether a candidate would become a hot spot. It takes just seconds to classify thousands of samples. Due to its computational efficiency, it is possible to use this method in physical design tools to rapidly assess the quality of printed patterns. We demonstrate one such application in which we evaluate the layout quality in the boundary region of standard cells. In the conventional standard cell layout optimization process, lithography simulation is the main layout verification method. Since it is a very time-consuming process, the iterative optimization approach between simulation and layout correction [2] takes a long time and only a limited number of context patterns can be explored. We show that with the proposed hot spot prediction method, for each standard cell, a much greater context pattern space can be explored, and the context sensitivity of a hot spot candidate located near a cell boundary can be estimated.

Citation Download Citation

Jen-Yi Wuu, Fedor G. Pikus, Andres Torres, and Malgorzata Marek-Sadowska "Detecting context sensitive hot spots in standard cell libraries", Proc. SPIE 7275, Design for Manufacturability through Design-Process Integration III, 727515 (12 March 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.814316

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available