Implementing designs of guard ring and fill structures from simple unit cells

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9202000-B1
Application number	US-201414503271-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Sep 30, 2014
Priority date	Sep 30, 2014
Publication date	Dec 1, 2015
Grant date	Dec 1, 2015

Abstract

Systems and methods for creating and placing custom guard rings create a guard ring from a plurality of unit cells reflecting the devices that are enclosed in the guard ring. Using a unit cell identified by a design tool user as the basic unit of the guard ring, with a few additional setup parameters, a complete, content-aware guard ring is created. The guard ring will consist of a collection of the identified unit cells placed around the circuit devices that are to be protected. The created guard ring will function as a single circuit component. Edits to the dimensions and/or parameters of the unit cell will affect the placement of the unit cell in the protected area and will therefore require creation of a new guard ring consistent with the changed parameters.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method for using a processor for creation of a guard ring in a circuit design, the method comprising:
upon receipt of a unit cell based on a portion of the circuit design, identifying configuration parameters for the guard ring, comprising a plurality of the unit cells, to be placed around the portion of the circuit design;
identifying an area around the portion where the guard ring will be placed; and
iteratively performing the following steps until the identif…

Assignees

• Cadence Design Systems Inc

Inventors

• Colwell Regis
• Lamant Gilles
• Cessna Jeremiah Emerson
• Elgalaind Khaled M
• Gad Haitham
• Yu Hsun-Chieh
• Fang Ming Yi

Classifications

• G06F30/392 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F30/39 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/5072 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic