JPH0379743B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a graphic editing device having a graphic information input means such as a coordinate input device, a graphic information display means such as a graphic display, and a graphic information processing means such as a calculator.

Mask patterns for integrated circuits usually consist of several to ten or more layers, and designing these mask patterns is often called layout. Since the mask is used to process a silicon substrate, there are many design rules for drawing between each layer mask figure or the figure of the own layer mask itself. These are called layout design rules. If the layout design rules are not followed, depending on the degree of violation, elements that are supposed to be formed on the silicon substrate may not be formed, or elements may be malfunctioning. It is not uncommon for modern integrated circuits to have more than 10,000 elements integrated on a single chip, and in such integrated circuits, the entire circuit often stops working due to a violation of layout design rules for one element. be. Therefore, it is a very important task to inspect the laid out mask pattern diagram for any violation of design rules.

Conventionally, inspection to determine whether there is a violation of layout design rules has been performed manually or by computer. The disadvantage of manual inspection is that it inevitably causes omissions, and the reliability of the inspection is poor. Further, the design rule inspection by a computer is performed by inputting the graphic data of the laid out mask pattern diagram and the data of the layout design rule to the computer. The disadvantage of conventional computer-based design rule inspections is that they require a lot of calculation time. In other words, inspection of layout design rules takes several tens of minutes to several hours even on a large computer. This is because the number of elements integrated into integrated circuits is increasing.

This drawback is not a drawback in the case of the first design rule inspection performed after completion of layout. However, as long as humans correct the rule violations detected in the first inspection, it is impossible to eliminate the possibility of making errors. Therefore, it is necessary to perform the design rule check more than once. In conventional computer-based design rule checks, a large amount of computer processing is wasted for such second and subsequent design rule checks. In other words, in the second and subsequent design rule inspections, most parts conform to the design rules, and if there are any violation of the rules, it should be only in the parts related to the modified figures, but the conventional design In rule inspection, all figures are inspected. Therefore, from the second time onwards, design rule inspection is performed even on parts that do not need to be inspected, which can be considered a major waste in terms of computer processing.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a means for omitting unnecessary computer processing in the second and subsequent layout design rule inspections and shortening the inspection processing time.

In order to achieve the above object, the graphic editing device of the present invention includes a graphic information input means, a graphic information display means, and a graphic information processing means, and the graphic information processing means inputs the graphic information. In response to an instruction to modify the graphic information from the means, the modified graphic information is stored separately from the unmodified graphic information, and the modified graphic information is stored between the modified graphic information and the unmodified graphic information. The present invention is characterized in that it is configured to perform design rule inspection. 2
In subsequent design rule checks, if there are any design rule violations, they are only related to this modified figure, so the computer only needs to perform design rule checks on this differentiated figure data. The amount of computer processing is significantly reduced, and the calculation time is also shortened.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be explained in detail with reference to Examples.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a graphic editing device embodying the present invention. Here, 1 is a calculator, 2 is a graphic display, and 3 is a coordinate input device. The coordinate input device is usually called a tablet.
The coordinate input device corresponds to the position on the screen of the graphic display. This allows humans to specify the coordinates of any position on the screen and input them into a computer.

In graphic editing devices, in order to enable the calculator to know the meaning of the coordinate data input as described above, commands can be input using the keyboard attached to the graphic display prior to inputting coordinates. It is done more. Various commands are prepared for adding new figures or modifying them. The computer creates or changes graphic data as specified by commands, and FIG. 2 shows the table format in which the graphic data is stored in memory. Here, one unit of the table is information on side vectors forming a figure. In the case of a mask pattern, the figure is a set of closed polygons, and the right hand side of the side vector is filled in. In Figure 2, the part surrounded by a solid line is information about one vector, the VN column is a unique number given to that vector, the PN column is a polygon-specific number given to the polygon that the vector forms, LY The column is the layer name of the vector, the SP column and EP column are the coordinate values of the vector's start point and end point, respectively, and the SN column and EN column are the numbers of the adjacent vectors connected to the vector's start point side and end point side, respectively. be.

Such a table of graphic data can be input and created by using the graphic editing device in the check-off mode. That is, the check-off mode is a mode in which a layout design rule check is not performed following command processing, and the command processing function in this mode is the same as that of a conventional graphic editing device.

The invention is implemented in check-on mode.
In check-on mode, in check-off mode
A transition can be made by continuously inserting the character string CHK ON and a new line mark. The flow of command processing in check-on mode is shown below.

Here, it is assumed that a graphic data table for the mask pattern as shown in FIG. 2 has already been created. This assumption is made because, as described above, the present invention is effective in modifying mask pattern diagrams with fewer violations of design rules.

An example of a command is STRECH, which has the function of expanding one side of a polygon. First, enter the command string STRECH and the layer name string from the keyboard. Subsequently, as shown in FIG. 3, the side to be widened is specified on the display screen (point 4), and the destination of that side is also specified (point 5).
Then, if a new line mark indicating the end of command and parameter input is input from the keyboard, the computer performs the following processing.

First, take out the data for each vector in the figure table in Figure 2, compare it with the layer name just entered in the Y column, and then generate the coordinates of point 4 in Figure 3 in the SP and EP columns. 4 in Figure 3 by checking whether it is included in the vector.
Retrieve the data of the edge vector specified by the point. Here, let the number of this vector be VN _O. Next, the SN column of this vector data and
Using the number in the EN column as a key, search the VN columns of other vectors and extract data for each vector whose value matches. Let the numbers of these vectors be VN _S and VN _E , respectively.

Next, the displacements of points 4 and 5 in FIG. 3 are taken.
If these are Δx and Δy (in the example of FIG. 3, Δy is 0), the SP column and EP column of the vectors VN _O , VN _S and VN _E can be rewritten as follows.

(1) Vector of VN _O SP _x = SP _x + Δx SP _y = SP _x + Δy EP _x = EP _x + Δx EP _x = EP _x + Δy (2) Vector of VN _S (adjacent vector on the starting point side) EP _x = EP _x +Δx EP _y =EP _y +Δy (3) Vector of VN _E (adjacent vector on end point side) SP _x = SP _x +△x SP _y = SP _y +△y New figure data table modified by the above operations (Fig. 2) is formed. Based on this data, the screen display on the graphic display is updated as shown in FIG. The processing up to this point is basically the same as that of a conventional graphic editing device. In the present invention, the following processing is further performed in the check-on mode.

First, the vector data of the vector numbers specified by VN _O , VN _S , and VN _E are moved to a memory area different from the table in FIG. 2. The moved data is then deleted from the original table. In other words,
The modified vector data is stored separately from the original data.

Next, conduct a design rule inspection. The inspection criteria are stored in the computer as a table as shown in FIG. Here, the row numbered 7 is the name of the layer of the mask, and the column numbered 8 is also the name of the layer of the mask. In the table, the minimum spacing between each layer is specified in rows and columns. A negative number means that the layer specified in column 8 is included in the layer specified in row 7, and an asterisk (*) means that the rule does not exist. The design rule check is performed between the vectors NV _O , NV _S , and NV _E that are stored separately and the vectors stored in other original tables. In other words, for example, if the vector of NV _O is a DIFF layer, among the vectors included in the original table, the DIFF layer vector is always 4 microns or more, the N layer vector is 5 microns or more, and so on. Check whether the vector of the POLY layer is 1 micron or more away, and the vector of the CONT layer is 3 microns or more inward. Similarly, NV _S ,
A design rule check is also performed on the vector of NV _E.

If a violation is found in the inspection of the above design rules, the two vectors are displayed so as to be distinguishable from each other, as shown in FIG. In the example of FIG. 6, the shaded area 9 is the violation location.

When the design rule inspection and violation location display are completed, VN _O , VN _S , and VN _E , which were separately stored, are
The data in the vector is returned to the original table. In other words, storing them separately is canceled.

Note that in the above embodiments, the corrected graphic data is stored in a different memory area from the original data to be stored separately, but it is also possible to separately store the data in the following manner. first,
This involves adding a graph column in the table format shown in Figure 2. That is, a flag of 0 means that no modification has been made, and a flag of 1 means that a modification has been made. The value of this flag allows the modified graphic data to be distinguished from other data. Also, VN in Figure 2
The number in the column represents the number, so if the data is not modified, it is guaranteed to be a positive number, and if the data is modified,
It is also possible to distinguish and store the numbers by adding a minus sign to the numbers in the VN column to make them negative numbers.

The processing of the above-described embodiment of the present invention can be conceptually expressed in a flowchart as shown in FIG. 7 in an easy-to-understand manner.

As described above, according to the present invention, design rule inspection is performed only on modified vector data, so that the computer processing time is significantly reduced.
For example, when there is a mask pattern diagram consisting of 1000 vectors, conventionally it would have required 1000 x 999 ÷ 2 rule checks, but according to the present invention,
For example, if the number of vectors to be modified is 10, then 999×
Only 10 regular inspections are required. In other words, the inspection time is approximately 1/
reduced to 50. This means that the inspection time, which used to be 50 minutes, is now 1 minute. This is of great significance when modifying or adding to a mask pattern using an interactive shape editing device; each time a human performs a modification or addition, it is necessary to wait a short period of time (for example, about 1 minute) to ensure that the operation is correct. The calculator will check if you have done it correctly. In other words, compared to the conventional method of performing a design rule check after all corrections are completed, the present invention requires less calculation time and also reduces the mental burden on humans during correction operations.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 shows an example of equipment configuration when implementing the present invention.
Here, 1 is a calculator, 2 is a graphic display, and 3 is a coordinate input device. FIG. 2 shows the format in which a computer stores mask pattern graphic data in a memory. FIG. 3 is an example of a correction command, and shows how to input coordinates when executing the STRETCH command. Here, point 4 is for specifying one side of the polygon, and point 5 is for moving the side specified by point 4 to this point. Figure 4 is the 5th
After the coordinates are entered as shown in the figure, STRECH
This is what will appear on the graphic display after the command has been executed. FIG. 5 is an example of a layout design rule table. FIG. 6 shows an example of a display when a violation is found as a result of a design rule inspection. Here, the shaded area 9 is the violation location. FIG. 7 is a flowchart of processing in the computer of the embodiment.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A graphic editing device having a graphic information input means, a graphic information display means, and a graphic information processing means, wherein the graphic information processing means inputs a graphic information from the graphic information input means. In response to an information modification instruction, the modified graphic information is stored separately from the unmodified graphic information, and the design rules are checked between the modified graphic information and the unmodified graphic information. A figure editing device characterized in that it is configured to perform. 2. Claim 1, wherein the graphical information display means displays the results of the inspection.
The figure editing device described in Section 1. 3. Claim 1, characterized in that the processing means for the graphic information is configured to, after the inspection, cancel the distinction between the modified graphic information and the unmodified graphic information. The figure editing device described in Section 1.