A roadmap of CAD tool changes for sub-micron interconnect problems
Lou Scheffer · 1997
Correct interconnectdesign is crucial to making sub-micron chips that work.Right now CAD tools do little or nothing to help prevent signal integrity and reliability problems in the interconnect.However, they need to address this problem very soon since a significant percentage of the nets in a 0.25 micron process will be affected by one or more signal integrity problems.These must be fixed automatically, since there will be too many to be fixed by hand.This paper looks at some possible solutions to thii problem.There are two basic ways to attack this problem -methodology changes and CAD tool changes.Neither is likely to solve the problem alone, and an optimum solution will include some of each.This paper concentrates on the CAD tool changes needed to automatically address sub-micron interconnect issues.A large number of tools in the design flow must be changed, and the data flow between these tools will be considerably more complex than in existing flows.1.