Yield-aware Placement Optimization

In this paper we describe a methodology addressing the issue of avoiding yield hazardous cell abutments during placement. This is made possible by accurate characterization of the yield penalty associated with particular cell-to-cell interactions. Of course characterizing all possible cell abutments in a library of 600+ cells is impractical. We will describe some simple heuristics that attempt to resolve the cell abutment pre-characterization complexity. Finally we will show a possible implementation of the proposed yield-aware placement optimization methodology and demonstrate the potential of cell interaction penalty characterization for a 90nm design test case.