A computer-aided approach to integrated circuit layout design

Abstract

The long turn-around times usually required by the design of integrated circuits can be greatly reduced if extensive use is made of digital computers. An investigation has been carried out by the authors to determine to what extent a computer can aid the designer in drawing the masks for integrated circuit fabrication starting from the circuit schematic. As a result of this investigation, a largely computerisable procedure for the layout of single metal layer, monolithic bipolar integrated circuits has been devised. Some steps of the procedure, which is described in this paper, have to be performed by the designer working at a display console; also the other steps can be monitored, and their results interactively modified, by the designer. A circuit partitioning technique makes the procedure fast and suitable for medium-power computers and low-precision displays, even when dealing with complex circuits.