Virtuosity: Automated Device Placement and Routing - Grid Generation

I'm back with my next post in the Virtuoso^® Automated Device-Level Placement and Routing series.

In my first post, I spoke about the need for the Automated Device-Level Placement and Routing solution. In my second post, I highlighted a very important step for Analog Design—identifying device groups and topologies for placement and routing. We saw how the automated device placement and routing solution in Virtuoso addresses this requirement.

Let's move a little further now. In this post, I'll talk about the next important step—generating rows and grids for placement and routing.

Need to Stay "On-Grid"

Advanced node processes have brought forward challenges not only in terms of complexity of rules and their associated restrictions, they have also opened doors to new methodology requirements that are driven by these restrictions. Analog and full custom designs are increasingly following a highly structured methodology for placement and routing. This methodology is driven by grids that help ensure a correct-by-construction layout and also achieve optimum placement and routing without sacrificing area or performance.

It is not an easy or trivial task for users to generate these placement and routing grids in compliance with the technology requirements and DRCs.

We've Made it Easy....

With our Automated Device-Level Placement and Routing Solution in Virtuoso, you should be able to follow the gridded, structured methodology to reap all its benefits. But you won’t have to worry about spending your time on grid generation and set up.

The necessary grids, which include the rows for device placement and variable-width tracks for routing, are generated automatically in the layout based on the device footprint, layers, and DRCs. Here's a quick view of the tasks:

Although we do generate the grids automatically for you, the controls are available for you to override or customize any settings that don’t work for you. Virtuoso provides a very intuitive interface to manage these settings.

Now that your placement and routing grids are set up, you might want to add device fills and perform automatic routing in accordance with these grids. I’ll talk about these steps in my upcoming blogs. Stay tuned!

Related Resources

Blogs

• Virtuosity: Introducing Automated Device Placement and Routing in Virtuoso
• Virtuosity: Automated Device Placement and Routing - Identifying Device Groups and Topologies

Rapid Adoption Kits

• Automated Device-Level Placement and Routing Flow for Advanced Nodes 
• Automatic Device-Level Routing in Advanced Nodes: Tree Route Flow 

Flow Guide

• Virtuoso Automated Device-Level Layout Flow Guide

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

About Virtuosity

Virtuosity has been our most viewed and admired blog series for a long time that has brought to fore some lesser known, yet very useful software and documentation improvements, and also shed light on some exciting new offerings in Virtuoso. We are now expanding the scope of this series by broadcasting the voice of different bloggers and experts, who would continue to preserve the legacy of Virtuosity, and try to give new dimensions to it by covering topics across the length and breadth of Virtuoso, and a lot more… Click Subscribe to visit the Subscription box at the top of the page in which you can submit your email address to receive notifications about our latest Virtuosity posts.

Happy Reading!

- Sravasti Nair