Virtuoso Video Diary: Flexible Connectivity Support of Dummy Devices

Virtuoso Video Diary is envisaged to be an online journal that will relay information about Virtuoso videos that are available in the Cadence Online Support Video Library. For IC6.1.7 and ICADV12.2, over a hundred videos on a wide variety of new and exciting Virtuoso features have already been created. Virtuoso Video Diary brings you direct links to these videos and other related material, on regular basis, in your mailbox. You can subscribe now to receive the e-mail notifications.

Why am I talking about dummies?

If I were to tell you that at lower geometries, Dummy Instances can guard active instances against process variations and from interference due to surrounding instances and nets, your response might be, “Don't talk history".

That dummy devices—dummy resistors and capacitors—can help maintain transistor performance at lower geometries, is not new. But do you know that dummy instances, which are passive devices because they have all their instance terminals connected to the same net, can be abutted to active instances, to free up some space in the layout. Some respite. At small geometries, accommodating additional dummy instances could be a bit too much to ask for.

Layout XL makes abutting dummy instances child’s play. Drag–drop, Drag-drop, and you can see the terminals of the dummy instance change their connectivity with each new drop that results in a valid overlap. Click the Play button below for a brief preview of the functionality.

If you have already used Layout XL to create dummy instances, tied them to a power or ground net, abutted them to an active instance, and know how the dummy instances change their connectivity with each overlap; then the full video, that I wanted to introduce to you, has nothing new to offer.

But, if anything here does sound new, or interesting, you might want to view the full video.

Click the video link now OR visit Cadence Online Support and search under Resources — Video Library for the video titled Demonstrating Flexible Connectivity Support of Dummy Instances

Note:Cadence Help supports native playback of videos (mp4) added to the installed Virtuoso Documentation Library. Look under Video Demos for a video topic of your interest. 

Related Resources

• Virtuoso Layout Suite XL User Guide
  • Generating Dummy Instances
  • BackAnnotating Dummy Instances
    
    
• Rapid Adoption Kit
  • VXL Back Annotation

Virtuoso Video Diary  – What’s Next

Virtuoso Video Diary will next bring to you an interesting video titled Markers: Tips and Tricks’ This video demonstrates the various tips, tricks, and shortcuts that you can apply while working with markers in Virtuoso Visualization and Analysis XL. Stay tuned…

Rishu Misri Jaggi