AUTOMATED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED-CIRCUITS WITH AREA-DISTRIBUTED INPUT-OUTPUT PADS

We present a method for automating the creation of complementary-metal -oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits that successfully util izes a large number of area-distributed pads for input-output communic ation. This method uses Duet Technologies' EPOCH computer-aided-design tool for automated placement and routing of CMOS circuitry, given a s chematic netlist as an input. The novelty of this approach is that it uses Duet Technologies' EGGO program to place and route area-pad signa ls. To verify this methodology, it is applied to the design of a digit al signal-processing circuit, with 200 optical area-pad input-outputs and 44 perimeter-pad input-outputs, that is being fabricated with Bell Labs 1997 CMOS-multiple-quantum-well foundry. The layout results are as good as or better than the results obtained by manual layout. (C) 1 998 Optical Society of America.