Integrated circuit devices and methods and apparatuses for designing integrated circuit devices
AssigneeSynopsys, Inc.
InventorKenneth S. McElvain
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods and apparatuses to design an Integrated Circuit (IC) with a shielding of wires. In at least one embodiment of the present invention, a shielding mesh of at least two reference voltages (e.g., power and ground) is used to reduce both the capacitive coupling and the inductive coupling in routed signal wires in IC chips. In some embodiments, a type of shielding mesh (e.g., a shielding mesh with a window surrounded by a power ring, or a window with a parser set of shielding wires) is selected to make more routing area available in locally congested areas. In other embodiments, the shielding mesh is used to create or add bypass capacitance. Other embodiments are also disclosed.
Claims72
A non-transitory machine readable storage medium containing executable computer program instructions which when executed by a digital processing system cause said system to perform a method to design an Integrated Circuit (IC) device, the method comprising:
- determining a representation of a shielding mesh in a substrate, the shielding mesh including a first plurality of connected wires for a first reference voltage and a second plurality of connected wires for a second reference voltage;
- and
- routing a representation of a first plurality of signal wires in the substrate to shield at least a first portion of each of the first plurality of the signal wires between one of the first plurality of connected wires and one of the second plurality of connected wires from adjacent signal wires;
- wherein a second portion of the first plurality of signal wires are adjacent to each other in a region defined by the first and second pluralities of connected wires, wherein at least one of the first plurality of connected wires in the region is replaced with one of the first plurality of signal wires.
The method of designing an integrated circuit (IC), said method comprising:
- creating a representation of a shielding mesh in a representation of a design of said IC, said shielding mesh comprising a first single layer shielding mesh and a first double layer shielding mesh which is coupled to said first single layer shielding mesh;
- creating a representation of a first signal line having a first unshielded portion, which is disposed in a first region of said IC which is adjacent to said first single layer shielding mesh, and having a first shielded portion which is disposed in said first single layer shielding mesh, and having a second shielded portion which is disposed in said first double layer shielding mesh, wherein a reference voltage line in the first region of the shielding mesh is replaced with the first unshielded portion of the first signal line, wherein at least one of the creating the representation of the shielding mesh and creating the representation of the first signal line is performed by a processor.
A non-transitory machine readable storage medium containing executable computer program instructions which when executed by a digital processing system cause said system to perform a method of designing an integrated circuit (IC), said method comprising:
- creating a representation of a shielding mesh in a representation of a design of said IC, said shielding mesh comprising a first single layer shielding mesh and a first double layer shielding mesh which is coupled to said first single layer shielding mesh;
- creating a representation of a first signal line having a first unshielded portion, which is disposed in a first region of said IC which is adjacent to said first single layer shielding mesh, and having a first shielded portion which is disposed in said first single layer shielding mesh, and having a second shielded portion which is disposed in said first double layer shielding mesh, wherein a reference voltage line in the first region of the shielding mesh is replaced with the first unshielded portion of the first signal line.
A non-transitory machine readable storage medium containing executable computer program instructions which when executed by a digital processing system cause said system to perform a method of designing an integrated circuit (IC), said method comprising:
- creating a representation of a shielding mesh in at least one layer of a representation of a design of said IC;
- routing representations of signal lines in said shielding mesh and outside of said shielding mesh based upon a set of predetermined rules;
- determining whether a re-routing condition exists;
- identifying removable shielding lines in said shielding mesh in response to determining that said re-routing condition exists.
A non-transitory machine readable storage medium containing executable computer program instructions which when executed by a digital processing system cause said system to perform a method of designing an integrated circuit (IC), said method comprising:
- creating a representation of a shielding mesh in at least one layer of a representation of a design of said IC;
- routing representations of signal lines in said shielding mesh based upon a set of predetermined rules;
- and
- removing a portion of a shielding line in said shielding mesh in connecting a representation of a signal line.
A method of designing an integrated circuit (IC), said method comprising:
- creating a representation of a shielding mesh in at least one layer of a representation of a design of said IC;
- routing representations of signal lines in said shielding mesh based upon a set of predetermined rules;
- and
- removing a portion of a shielding line in said shielding mesh in connecting a representation of a signal line, wherein at least one of the creating, routing, and removing is performed by a processor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.