Computer-assisted design analysis method for extracting device and interconnect information

A method of extracting design information from a pre-existing semiconductor integrated circuit (IC), or at least a portion thereof, comprising the steps of:

• a. imaging at lest of a portion of one or more physical layers of the pre-existing IC to obtain stored images of the IC layers;
• b. mosaicking the stored images of each IC physical layer using a registration technique;
• c. recreating an IC layout in the form of a polygon database using an IC layout package including one or more of the following:
• i. manually placing specialized symbols over a pattern in the stored images of the physical IC layers for storage in the polygon database, the specialized symbols being recognizable by a netlist tool;
• ii. manually drawing polygons over other elements of the stored images of the physical IC layers for storage in the polygon database;
• and
• iii. manually drawing interconnections between polygons and the specialized symbols for storage in the polygon database;
• d. exporting or storing the polygon database in a standard IC layout format;
• e. creating a netlist using the polygon database;
• f. organizing the netlist into functional blocks of increasing complexity;
• and
• g. generating a schematic diagram using the netlist.

A method of extracting design information from a pre-existing semiconductor integrated circuit (IC), or at least a portion thereof, comprising the steps of:

• a. imaging at least a portion of one or more physical layers of the pre-existing IC to obtain stored images of IC physical layers;
• b. manually drawing polygons over the stored images of the physical IC layers using an IC layout package to recreate an IC layout in the form of a polygon database;
• i. displaying the stored images of the physical IC layers as a set of background images using the IC layout package;
• ii. toggling between the background images;
• iii. moving the background images relative to a fixed point in the polygon database using the IC layout package;
• and
• iv. rotating the background images relative to a fixed point in the polygon database using the IC layout package;
• c. exporting or storing the polygon database in a standard IC layout format;
• and
• d. creating a netlist using the polygon database.