C2011-09

About

The General-Purpose Layout Surveyor (GPLS) is a tool that utilizes the Calibre commercial verification software to relate layout geometry to corresponding schematic elements. With this information available, GPLS can be used to implement a wide range of layout geometry related effects into the circuit's compact model simulations. To prototype its function, it was designed to extract the geometry features pertinent to modeling the effect of charge sharing after a single event radiation strike. Today's typical flows that use compact model simulations for investigating this effect do not consider layout, and instead simulate every single possible combination of transistors sharing charge. GPLS eliminates the device arrangements that will not realistically share charge, therefore reducing the number of simulations that must be executed. The resulting savings in time and processing power used increase exponentially with integrated circuit size and size transistor groupings.