Development of Plugins for Library Validation

Abstract

Design for ICs are created by STMicroelectronics. These packages are then sold to customers and they fabricate it for further use. These packages are validated before giv- ing it to customers. This validation when done manually takes time and effoorts. The work is done to develop the scripts for validating the library, so as to reduce the time for validation. A library for an IC chip is a collection of cells and has various layers. A cell is the basic deisgn unit. Different views are defined that tells about the physical, logical and timing information of the cell. LEF, lib, cdl, verilog etc. contains the information related to cell. The views are also customized according to the needs of different companies. For validation different plugins are created which checks certain aspects of a library. The work was done on Modelization and Crosscheck plugin. For DRC check and LVS check the specs were changed, so the new code was developed. For some checks bugs were Fixed. The customer gives the specification for a check. A spec File contains the basic ow, view on which check is to be performed, the options that user can provide for running that check, etc. Then we develop the scripts for that check. Then unit testing is done by us and we give it for Regression testing. And if there is no problem in package,then it is provided to customer. The library can be tested for validating different views, checking the syntax of the views or checking the consistency between different views or the tags are crosschecked against certain specifications, the routing or obstruction information is also validated etc. The scripts that are developed are integrated in a module and tested against various libraries using different tools and versions. The reports and logs are generated, so that the user can know where the error is present in library.