Opc-Free And Minimally Irregular Ic Design Style

Advancements in IC manufacturing technologies allow for building very large devices with billions of transistors and with complex interactions between them encapsulated in a huge number of design rules. To ease designers' efforts in dealing with electrical and manufacturing problems, regular layout style seems to be a viable option. In this paper we analyze regular layouts in an IC manufacturability context and define their desired properties. We introduce the OPC-free IC design methodology and study properties of cells designed for this layout style that have various degrees of regularity.