METHOD OF DESIGNING LSI CIRCUIT USING HARD BLOCKS AND METHOD OF RESTORING CELL-PLACEMENT INFORMATION OF HARD BLOCKS FOR LSI

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To design an LSI circuit using hard blocks without increasing chip size.;SOLUTION: Hard-block cells 110 are used for the design by restoring cell- placement information inside a hard block, which is otherwise conventionally treated as a black box. Each transistor is recognized on a layout pattern of the hard block, and is collated with a transistor on a netlist in terms of coordinate values to recognize placement of each cell with each instance name. The power source lines and wiring originally contained in the hard block are not used. In designing a soft block 200, hard-block cells 110 are incorporated to design the total LSI circuit. By determining the placement of the soft-block cells 210 and the wiring for the hard-block cells 110 and for the soft-block cells 210 with an automatic placement and routing tool, it is possible to share the power-source lines 220 and to pass the chip wiring 300 within each block, and consequently it is possible to reduce the chip area.;COPYRIGHT: (C)2001,JPO