IMPROVED METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SUBMICRON IC DESIGN USING EDGE FRAGMENT TAGGING

摘要

The present invention beneficially provides an improved method and apparatus for designing submicron integrated circuits. A tag identifier is provided to an integrated circuit (IC) design. The tag identifier defines a set of properties for edge fragments. Edge fragments are tagged if they have the set of properties defined by the tag identifier. For instance, tag identifiers may define edge fragments that make up line ends or corners, or tag identifiers may define edge fragment that have predetermined edge placement errors. In various embodiments, functions can be performed on the tagged edge fragments. For instance, rule-based optical proximity correction (OPC) or model-based OPC can be performed on the tagged edge fragments. Other functions may mark tagged edge fragments in a visual display of the IC design, display the number of edge fragments having particular tags in a histogram, or identify particularly complex and error prone regions in the IC design.