A Polynomial Time Optimal Diode Insertion/Routing Algorithm for Fixing Antenna Problem

  • Authors:

  • L. Huang;X. Tang;H. Xiang;D. Wong;I. Liu

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX;Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX;Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX;Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX;Silicon Perspective Corporation, 3211 Scott Blvd., Suite 100, Santa Clara, CA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe
  • Year:
  • 2002

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Antenna problem is a phenomenon of plasma induced gateoxide degradation. It directly affects manufacturability of VLSIcircuits, especially in deep-submicron technology using high density plasma. Diode insertion is a very effective way to solve thisproblem. Ideally diodes are inserted directly under the wires thatviolate antenna rules. But in today's high-density VLSI layouts,there is simply not enough room for iounder-the-wirel. diode insertion for all wires. Thus it is necessary to insert many diodesat legal ieoff-wirel- locations and extend the antenna-rule violating wires to connect to their respective diodes. Previously onlysimple heuristic algorithms were available for this diode insertionand routing problem. In this paper, we show that the diode insertion and routing problem for an arbitrary given number of routinglayers can be optimally solved in polynomial time. Our algorithmguarantees to find a feasible diode insertion and routing solutionwhenever one exists. Moreover, we can guarantee to find a feasible solution to minimize a cost function of the form \alpha\cdot L + \beta\cdot Nwhere \cdot L is the total length of extension wires and\cdot N is the total number of vias on the extension wires. Experimental results showthat our algorithm is very efficient.