An innovative method to automate the waiver of IP-level DRC violations

Abstract

Intellectual property (IP) blocks often contain known design rule checking errors that have been “waived” by the foundry, meaning they acknowledge the error as a design rule violation, but do not consider it to be a critical yield-limiting defect. Because this waiver information is not conveyed in any consistent manner with the IP, waived IP design rule violations that reappear when the IP is integrated into a full-chip design must typically be investigated as though they are new violations. This paper will review various historic methods used to identify waived errors at the chip level, then propose a new automated method for identifying and eliminating waived errors, allowing chip designers to achieve accurate design rule checking results while minimizing debug time.