A 3D Interactive Visualization Program for Interconnect Capacitance Extraction of Integrated Circuits

Abstract

In order to assist the development and debugging of the RWCap program package, and increase the visuality of Cap3D files, a three-dimensional (3D) interactive visualization program RWCapView is developed to show intuitively and clearly the special structure illustrated by the Cap3D files. The program reads in Cap3D files and extract 3D coordinate data from it using a LL grammar parser generated by ANTLR. Then Z-buffering algorithm and sweep line algorithm are utilized to output the image, together with the axes and scale of the conductor space to identify its position and measurement. By implementing basic affine transformation detailed multi-angle inspection of the conductor space is supported. And by constructing linkages among metal layers, medium layers and conductors, multiple ways of filtering conductors are supported. Experiments based on real life layouts show that it takes about 3 seconds in total to parse and output the image of a layout with more than 10 000 conductor blocks, with about 100 milliseconds response time when performing various transformation or filtering, proving that it can efficiently handle very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuit layouts.