Method and mechanism for determining shape connectivity
AssigneeCadence Design Systems, Inc.
InventorEric Nequist
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and mechanism is disclosed for identifying connected shapes and objects in an electrical design. The entire hierarchical design does not have to be flattened to perform the operation of identifying connected objects for a specific object. Instead of unfolding the entire design hierarchy, only the specific instances of shapes falling within the geometric bounds of shapes need to be unfolded to perform the search.
Claims15
A method for identifying connectivity for an object in a hierarchical configuration of objects representing an integrated circuit design, comprising:
- (a) identifying a seed object for which information about connectivity to other objects is desired;
- (b) determining other objects that are directly connected to the seed object, wherein the act of determining the other objects comprises unfolding the hierarchical configuration only for one or more instances of elements which are directly connected to the seed object;
- (c) selecting one or more of the other objects as the seed object and repeating (a) and (b);
- and
- (d) providing a list of connected objects within the integrated circuit design based upon the results of (a), (b), and (c).
A computer program product comprising a computer readable medium storing thereon instructions which, when executed by a processing system, cause the system to perform a method for extracting connectivity for identifying connectivity for an object in a hierarchical configuration of objects representing an integrated circuit design, the method comprising:
- (a) identifying a seed object for which information about connectivity to other objects is desired;
- (b) determining other objects that are directly connected to the seed object, wherein the act of determining the other objects comprises unfolding the hierarchical configuration only for one or more instances of elements which are directly connected to the seed object;
- (c) selecting one or more of the other objects as the seed object and repeating (a) and (b);
- and
- (d) providing a list of connected objects within the integrated circuit design based upon the results of (a), (b), and (c).
A system for identifying connectivity for an object in a hierarchical configuration of objects representing an integrated circuit design, comprising:
- (a) logic for identifying a seed object for which information about connectivity to other objects is desired;
- (b) logic for determining other objects that are directly connected to the seed object, wherein the act of determining the other objects comprises unfolding the hierarchical configuration only for one or more instances of elements which are directly connected to the seed object;
- (c) logic for selecting one or more of the other objects as the seed object and repeating (a) and (b);
- and
- (d) providing a list of connected objects within the integrated circuit design based upon the results of (a), (b), and (c).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.