Mark Ward, Product Engineering Director, Advanced Defect Screening/DFM, LSI
David Abercrombie, DFM Program Manager, Mentor Graphics
Cosmin Cazan, DFM Intern, Mentor Graphics
Milind Sonawane, Staff Product Engineer, LSI

This paper documents the results of a critical area and critical feature analysis study of four LSI production 90 nm designs. Recommended rule adherence and statistical sensitivity to random particle defects were evaluated and used to prioritize the yield issues of IP, memories, and the cell-to-cell routing in various products. Automated correction of recommended rule violations was run in the logic routing to quantify the amount of optimization possible without rerouting the chips. Comparisons were done between the chips to identify commonalities and differences among different design implementations.