Methods, apparatus and computer program products for synthesizing integrated circuits with electrostatic discharge capability and connecting ground rules faults therein

Sung Mo (Steve) Kang (Inventor), Carlos H Diaz (Inventor), Sridhar Ramaswamy (Inventor), Charvaka Duvvury (Inventor)

Research output: Patent

Abstract

A method, apparatus and computer program product for synthesizing and correcting ESD and EOS ground rules faults in integrated circuits generates a representation of a first functional circuit element (e.g., logic gate) connected to a representation of a first input/output (I/O) pad, via a representation of a first electrical path, and generates a representation of a first ESD circuit element connected to the representation of the first input/output pad via a representation of a second electrical path which may overlap a portion of the first electrical path. First and second sheet resistances (or quantities related thereto) of the first and second electrical paths, respectively, are determined and a length and/or width of the representation of at least one of the first and second electrical paths is adjusted if the first sheet resistance is greater than the second sheet resistance, so that the first sheet resistance is less than the second sheet resistance. Corners in representations of adjacent power rails are also detected, where these representations have opposing edges separated by a minimum rail spacing, and a position of at least one of the power rails relative to the other is adjusted so that the opposing edges are separated by a spacing which is no less than about two times the minimum rail spacing.
Original languageEnglish (US)
U.S. patent number5796638
StatePublished - Aug 18 1998

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