Technical ReportDigital CMOS Integrated Circuits (ICs) suffer from serious layout features printability issues associated to the lithography manufacturing process. Regular layout designs are emerging as alternative solutions to reduce these ICs systematic subwavelength lithography failures. However, there is no metric to evaluate and compare the layout regularity of those regular designs.
In this paper we propose a new layout regularity metric
called Fixed Origin Corner Square Inspection (FOCSI).
FOCSI allows the comparison and quantification of designs
in terms of regularity and for any given degree of
granularity. When FOCSI is oriented to the evaluation
of regularity while applying Lithography Enhancement
Techniques, it comprehends layout layers measurements
considering the optical interaction length
and combines them to obtain the complete layout regularity
measure. Examples are provided for 32-bit adders
in the 90 nm technology node for the Standard Cell approach
and for Via-Configurable Transistor Array regular
designs. We show how layouts can be sorted accurately
even if their degree of regularity is similar.Preprin
