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  Properties in electronic design automationUSPTO Application #: 20080115096Title: Properties in electronic design automation Abstract: One or more properties can be associated with a design object in a microdevice design. The design object may be an object in a physical layout design for a microdevice, such as a geometric element in a layout design. The design object also may be a collection of geometric elements in a layout design, such as a net, a cell in a hierarchical design, or even a collection of all of the geometric elements in a layer of a design. Still further, the design object may even be an item in a logical circuit design, such as a net in a logical circuit design for an integrated circuit. The values of one or more properties may be statically assigned for or dynamically generated during a design process performed by an electronic design automation tool. A property may be assigned a constant value or a value defined by an equation or other type of script that includes one or more variables. A property may be simple, where the definition of the property's value is not dependent upon the value of any other properties. Alternately, a property may be a compound property, where the definition of the property's value incorporates another, previously-determined property value. Still further, a property may be an alternative property, where the property is assigned one value definition under a first set of conditions and assigned another value definition under a second set of conditions. A first electronic design automation process may generate one or more property values. The generated property values then can be passed to another electronic design automation process in the design analysis flow for its use. (end of abstract) Agent: Mentor Graphics Corp. Patent Group - Wilsonville, OR, US Inventor: Fedor G. Pikus USPTO Applicaton #: 20080115096 - Class: 716 4 (USPTO) The Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20080115096. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001]This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/850,716 entitled "Properties In Electronic Design Automation," filed on Oct. 9, 2006, and naming Fedor Pikus as inventor, which application is incorporated entirely herein by reference. FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002]The present invention is directed to the use of properties in electronic design automation. Various implementations of the invention may be useful for exchanging one or more properties between processes in an automated electronic design tool. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003]Many microdevices, such as integrated circuits, have become so complex that these devices cannot be manually designed. For example, even a simple microprocessor may have millions and millions of transistors that cooperate to form the components of the microprocessor. As a result, electronic design automation tools have been created to assist circuit designers in analyzing a circuit design before it is manufactured. These electronic design automation tools typically will execute one or more electronic design automation (EDA) processes to verify that the circuit design complies with specified requirements, identify problems in the design, modify the circuit design to improve its manufacturability, or some combination thereof. For example, some electronic design automation tools may provide one or more processes for simulating the operation of a circuit manufactured from a circuit design to verify that the design will provides the desired functionality. Still other electronic design automation tools may alternately or additionally provide one or more processes for confirming that a circuit design matches the intended circuit schematic, for identifying portions of a circuit design that do not comply with preferred design conventions, for identifying flaws or other weaknesses the design, or for modifying the circuit design to address any of these issues. Examples of electronic design automation tools include the Calibre family of software tools available from Mentor Graphics Corporation of Wilsonville, Oreg. [0004]As electronic design automation tools continue to develop, greater sophistication is being demanded from these tools. For example, in addition to detecting obvious design flaws, many electronic design automation tools are now expected to identify those design objects in a design that have a significant likelihood of being improperly formed during the manufacturing process, determine the resultant impact on manufacturing yield that these design objects will create, and/or identify design changes that will allow the design objects to be more reliably manufactured during the manufacturing process (e.g., "design-for-manufacture" (DFM)). In order to meet these expectations, a process executed by an electronic design automation tool may need to perform more calculations than with previous generations of electronic design automation tools. For example, a design rule check process may confirm that the polygons used in a physical layout design to form individual wiring lines are separated by a minimum specified distance. In addition, however, the design rule check process also may determine the likelihood that the polygons may nonetheless form the wiring lines with an erroneous bridging fault. This determination may require, for example, calculating the distance between the polygons, the length for which the polygons run adjacent to each other, and the thickness of the polygons at their adjacent portions. [0005]Because even a single process executed by an electronic design automation tool may require millions of calculations, improvements in the speed and efficiency of electronic design automation tools are continuously being sought. Still further, additional functionality for electronic design automation tools also is continuously being sought, in order to improve their usefulness to circuit designers and manufacturers. BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0006]Aspects of the invention relate to techniques of more efficiently processing data for electronic design automation. As will be discussed in detail below, embodiments of both tools and methods implementing these techniques have particular application for analyzing microdevice design data, such as integrated circuit design data. [0007]According to various implementations of the invention, one or more properties can be associated with a design object in a microdevice design. The design object may be any data in a physical layout design for a microdevice. For example, the design object may be a geometric element in a layout design, such as a polygon, a polygon edge, a group of edges, or one or more vertices of a polygon. The design object also may be a collection of geometric elements in a layout design, such as a group of polygons, a cell in a hierarchical design, every cell of a specified type in a hierarchical design, or even a collection of all of the geometric elements in a layer of a design. Still further, the design object may be any item of data in another type of circuit design, including a non-geometric item, such as a net, device, or instance of a connection pin in a logical circuit design for an integrated circuit, or the placement of a cell in a hierarchical circuit design. [0008]With some examples of the invention, one or more properties may be statically assigned during the execution of a design process by an electronic design automation tool. Alternately or additionally, one or more properties may be dynamically generated during the execution of a design process by an electronic design automation tool. A property may have any desired data value. For example, a property may be assigned a constant value or a vector value. Alternately, a property may be assigned a variable value. For example, a property may be defined by an equation or other type of script that includes one or more variables. A property's value thus may be dynamically derived from, e.g., geometric data in the design. [0009]A property may be a simple property, where the definition of the property's value is not dependent upon the value of any other properties. Alternately, a property may be a compound property, where the definition of the property's value incorporates one or more other, previously-determined property values. Still further, a property may be an alternative property. With an alternative property, the property will have one value definition under a first set of conditions, and another value definition under a second set of conditions. [0010]A property also may have multiple values. A property may have, for example, an x-coordinate value, a y-coordinate value, and a z-coordinate value. Moreover, a property may have multiple, heterogeneous values. For example, a property may have both a numerical value and a string value. A property associated with a cell in a hierarchical layout circuit design thus could have a numerical value that may be, e.g., a device count of devices in the cell, and a string value that may be, e.g., a model name identifying the library source for the cell. Of course, a property with multiple heterogeneous values can have any combination of types of value definitions, including any combination of the types of value definitions described above (e.g., one or more constant value definitions, one or more vector value definitions, one or more dynamic value definitions, one or more simple value definitions, one or more compound value definitions, one or more string value definitions, etc.). A property may even have multiple alternative value definitions, where one or more of the alternative value definitions are of different types. [0011]Advantageously, various implementations of the invention may allow a first electronic design automation process to generate one or more property values. The generated property values can then be passed to another electronic design automation process. For example, a design rule check (DRC) process may generate one or more property values for each of a plurality of geometric elements in a physical layout design. The design rule check process can then pass these property values onto a second electronic design automation process, such as an optical proximity correction (OPC) process. By using the property values provided by the design rule check process, the optical proximity correction process can avoid having to recalculate the property values. This use of property values may be particularly beneficial where the second electronic design automation process cannot easily calculate the property values itself, or where the second electronic design automation process cannot calculate the property values as quickly or efficiently as the first electronic design automation process. [0012]Similarly, property values may be generated by a first portion of an electronic design automation process, and subsequently provided to a second portion of the same electronic design process. For example, one portion of a design-for-manufacture (DFM) process may generate a set of property values for each of a plurality of geometric elements in a physical layout design during a first operation. The first portion of the design-for-manufacture process can then provide the calculated properties to a second, subsequent portion of the process. This use of property values may be particularly beneficial where the second portion of the electronic design automation process cannot easily calculate the property values itself, or where the second portion of the electronic design automation process cannot calculate the property values as quickly or efficiently as the first portion of the electronic design automation process. [0013]These and other features and aspects of the invention will be apparent upon consideration of the following detailed description. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0014]FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a computing system that may be used to implement various embodiments of the invention. [0015]FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a multi-core processor unit that may be used to implement various embodiments of the invention. [0016]FIG. 3 schematically illustrates an example of a family of software tools for automatic design automation that may employ associative properties according to various embodiments of the invention. [0017]FIG. 4 illustrates geometric elements in a microcircuit layout design that may be associated with one or more properties according to various embodiments of the invention. [0018]FIG. 5 illustrates one example of a type of array that may be employed by various embodiments of the invention. [0019]FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart showing a method that an EDA process may use to generate and provide a property value to another EDA process. Continue reading... Full patent description for Properties in electronic design automation Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this Properties in electronic design automation patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. Each week you receive an email with patent applications related to your keywords. Start now! - Receive info on patent apps like Properties in electronic design automation or other areas of interest. ### Previous Patent Application: Method for feedback circuit design Next Patent Application: Properties in electronic design automation Industry Class: Data processing: design and analysis of circuit or semiconductor mask ### FreshPatents.com Support Thank you for viewing the Properties in electronic design automation patent info. 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