Discharge-path-based antenna effect detection and fixing for X-architecture clock tree

Antenna effect is a phenomenon in the plasma-based nanometer process and directly influences the manufacturing yield of VLSI circuits. Because antenna-critical metal wires have sufficient charges to damage the thin gate oxides of the clock input ports connected by a clock tree, the standard cells or IPs cannot be driven by the clock source synchronously. For a given X-architecture clock tree that connects n clock sinks, we consider the antenna effect in the clock tree and propose a discharge-path-based antenna effect detection method. To fix the antenna violations, we use the jumper insertion technique recommended by foundries. Furthermore, we integrate the layer assignment technique to reduce the inserted jumper and via counts. Differing from the existing works, the delay of vias is considered in delay calculation, and a wire sizing technique is applied for clock skew compensation after fixing the antenna violations. Experimental results on benchmarks show that our algorithm runs in O(n2) to averagely insert 48.21% less jumpers and reduce 20.35% in vias compared with other previous algorithms. Moreover, the SPICE simulation further verifies the correctness of the resulting clock tree.

► Antenna effect is a phenomenon in the nanometer process and influences the yield.
► A discharge-path based on antenna effect detection is adopted for an X-clock tree.
► The jumper insertion and layer assignment are integrated to fix antenna violations.
► Our approach can reduce 48.21% and 20.35% in inserted jumpers and vias, respectively.