A methodology for fast and accurate yield factor estimation during global routing
Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design
Proceedings of the 18th ACM Great Lakes symposium on VLSI
Full-chip routing system for reducing Cu CMP & ECP variation
Proceedings of the 21st annual symposium on Integrated circuits and system design
ECP- and CMP-aware detailed routing algorithm for DFM
IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
Structured analog circuit design and MOS transistor decomposition for high accuracy applications
Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design
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Thickness range, i.e. the difference between the highest point and the lowest point of the chip surface, is a key indicator of chip yield. This paper presents a novel metal filling algorithm that seeks to minimize the thickness range of the chip surface during the copper damascene process. The proposed solution considers the physical mechanisms in the damascene process, namely ECP (which is the process used to deposit Cu in the trenches) and CMP (which is the process used to polish Cu after ECP), that affect thickness range. Key predictors for the final thickness range, which is the thickness range after ECP&CMP, that can be computed efficiently are identified and used to drive the metal filling process. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first metal filling algorithm that uses an ECP model among other things to guide metal filling. Experimental results are very promising and indicate that the proposed method can significantly reduce the thickness range after metal filling. This is in sharp contrast with the density-driven approaches which often increase the thickness range after metal filling, thereby potentially adversely impacting yield. In addition, the proposed method inserts significantly smaller amount of fill when compared to the density-driven approaches. This is desirable as it limits the impact of metal filling on timing.