A framework for industrial layout generators

Abstract

The MACLOG family of layout generators creates parameterized custom layouts for many of the cells in the AT&T Cell Library. The authors describe not the MACLOG generators themselves, but the MACLOG framework that is the base of all the generators. The MACLOG generators are built on an object-oriented framework. Though object-oriented design techniques have been described in the literature, the MACLOG framework is one of the first such frameworks used to build an industrial-quality layout generator set. The attempt to build an object-oriented framework structure around the module types results in excessive code duplication and a hard-to-maintain structure. The authors found the service hierarchy-the types of information provided to the user by the generator-often to be a more effective axis for decomposition of functions in the framework. The authors describe the MACLOG framework and detail experiments with framework structure. >