System for designing integrated circuits with enhanced manufacturability

Abstract

A system and method for integrated circuit design are disclosed to enhance manufacturability of circuit layouts through generation of hierarchical design rules which capture localized layout requirements. In contrast to conventional techniques which apply global design rules, the disclosed IC design system and method partition the original design layout into a desired level of granularity based on specified layout and integrated circuit properties. At that localized level, the design rules are adjusted appropriately to capture the critical aspects from a manufacturability standpoint. These adjusted design rules are then used to perform localized layout manipulation and mask data conversion.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.