EXCL: A Circuit Extractor for IC Designs

Abstract

This paper describes EXCL, an automated circuit extraction program that transforms an IC layout into a circuit representation suitable for detailed circuit simulation. The program has built-in, general extraction algorithms capable of accurate computations of interconnection resistance, internodal capacitance, ground capacitance, and transistor sizes. However, where possible, the general algorithms are replaced with simple techniques, thereby improving execution speed. A basic component of the extractor is a procedure that decomposes regions into domains appropriate for specialized or simple algorithms. The paper describes the decomposition algorithm, the extraction algorithms and discusses how they connect with the rest of EXCL.