17,436 research outputs found
On the suitability and development of layout templates for analog layout reuse and layout-aware synthesis
Accelerating the synthesis of increasingly complex analog integrated circuits is key to bridge the widening gap between what we can integrate and what we can design while meeting ever-tightening time-to-market constraints. It is a well-known fact in the semiconductor industry that such goal can only be attained by means of adequate CAD methodologies, techniques, and accompanying tools. This is particularly important in analog physical synthesis (a.k.a. layout generation), where large sensitivities of the circuit performances to the many subtle details of layout implementation (device matching, loading and coupling effects, reliability, and area features are of utmost importance to analog designers), render complete automation a truly challenging task. To approach the problem, two directions have been traditionally considered, knowledge-based and optimization-based, both with their own pros and cons. Besides, recently reported solutions oriented to speed up the overall design flow by means of reuse-based practices or by cutting off time-consuming, error-prone spins between electrical and layout synthesis (a technique known as layout-aware synthesis), rely on a outstandingly rapid yet efficient layout generation method. This paper analyses the suitability of procedural layout generation based on templates (a knowledge-based approach) by examining the requirements that both layout reuse and layout-aware solutions impose, and how layout templates face them. The ability to capture the know-how of experienced layout designers and the turnaround times for layout instancing are considered main comparative aspects in relation to other layout generation approaches. A discussion on the benefit-cost trade-off of using layout templates is also included. In addition to this analysis, the paper delves deeper into systematic techniques to develop fully reusable layout templates for analog circuits, either for a change of the circuit sizing (i.e., layout retargeting) or a change of the fabrication process (i.e., layout migration). Several examples implemented with the Cadence's Virtuoso tool suite are provided as demonstration of the paper's contributions.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2004-0175
Measurement of retinal vessel widths from fundus images based on 2-D modeling
Changes in retinal vessel diameter are an important sign of diseases such as hypertension, arteriosclerosis and diabetes mellitus. Obtaining precise measurements of vascular widths is a critical and demanding process in automated retinal image analysis as the typical vessel is only a few pixels wide. This paper presents an algorithm to measure the vessel diameter to subpixel accuracy. The diameter measurement is based on a two-dimensional difference of Gaussian model, which is optimized to fit a two-dimensional intensity vessel segment. The performance of the method is evaluated against Brinchmann-Hansen's half height, Gregson's rectangular profile and Zhou's Gaussian model. Results from 100 sample profiles show that the presented algorithm is over 30% more precise than the compared techniques and is accurate to a third of a pixel
Fused Text Segmentation Networks for Multi-oriented Scene Text Detection
In this paper, we introduce a novel end-end framework for multi-oriented
scene text detection from an instance-aware semantic segmentation perspective.
We present Fused Text Segmentation Networks, which combine multi-level features
during the feature extracting as text instance may rely on finer feature
expression compared to general objects. It detects and segments the text
instance jointly and simultaneously, leveraging merits from both semantic
segmentation task and region proposal based object detection task. Not
involving any extra pipelines, our approach surpasses the current state of the
art on multi-oriented scene text detection benchmarks: ICDAR2015 Incidental
Scene Text and MSRA-TD500 reaching Hmean 84.1% and 82.0% respectively. Morever,
we report a baseline on total-text containing curved text which suggests
effectiveness of the proposed approach.Comment: Accepted by ICPR201
Learning Adaptive Discriminative Correlation Filters via Temporal Consistency Preserving Spatial Feature Selection for Robust Visual Tracking
With efficient appearance learning models, Discriminative Correlation Filter
(DCF) has been proven to be very successful in recent video object tracking
benchmarks and competitions. However, the existing DCF paradigm suffers from
two major issues, i.e., spatial boundary effect and temporal filter
degradation. To mitigate these challenges, we propose a new DCF-based tracking
method. The key innovations of the proposed method include adaptive spatial
feature selection and temporal consistent constraints, with which the new
tracker enables joint spatial-temporal filter learning in a lower dimensional
discriminative manifold. More specifically, we apply structured spatial
sparsity constraints to multi-channel filers. Consequently, the process of
learning spatial filters can be approximated by the lasso regularisation. To
encourage temporal consistency, the filter model is restricted to lie around
its historical value and updated locally to preserve the global structure in
the manifold. Last, a unified optimisation framework is proposed to jointly
select temporal consistency preserving spatial features and learn
discriminative filters with the augmented Lagrangian method. Qualitative and
quantitative evaluations have been conducted on a number of well-known
benchmarking datasets such as OTB2013, OTB50, OTB100, Temple-Colour, UAV123 and
VOT2018. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed
method over the state-of-the-art approaches
Aberration-aware robust mask design with level-set-based inverse lithography
Optical proximity correction (OPC) is one of the most widely used Resolution Enhancement Techniques (RET) in mask designs. Conventional OPC is often designed for a set of nominal imaging parameters without giving sufficient attention to the process variations caused by aspherical wavefront leaving the exit pupil of the lithography system. As a result, the mask designed may deliver poor performance with process variations. In this paper, we first describe how a general point spread function (PSF) with wave aberration can degrade the output pattern quality, and then show how the wave aberration function can be incorporated into an inverse imaging framework for robust input mask pattern design against aberrations. A level-set-based time-dependent model can then be applied to solve it with appropriate finite difference schemes. The optimal mask gives more robust performance against either one specific type of aberration or a combination of different types of aberrations. © 2010 SPIE.published_or_final_versionThe Photomask and Next-Generation Lithography Mask Technology XVII, Yokohama, Japan, 13-14 April 2010. in Proceedings of SPIE, 2010, v. 7748, article no. 77481U, p. 1-
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