OpenMPL: An Open-Source Layout Decomposer

Wei Li, Yuzhe Ma, Qi Sun, Lu Zhang, Yibo Lin, Iris Hui-Ru Jiang, Bei Yu, David Z. Pan

Abstract: Multiple patterning lithography has been widely adopted in advanced technology nodes of VLSI manufacturing. As a key step in the design flow, multiple patterning layout decomposition (MPLD) is critical to design closure. Due to the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {N} \mathcal {P} $ </tex-math></inline-formula> -hardness of the general decomposition problem, various efficient algorithms have been proposed with high-quality solutions. However, with increasingly complicated design flow and peripheral processing steps, developing a high-quality layout decomposer becomes more and more difficult, slowing down further advancement in this field. This article presents <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {OpenMPL}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (2020), an open-source layout decomposition framework, with well-separated peripheral processing and core solving steps. Besides, previous algorithms or techniques are inspected and several issues are discovered. We then propose corresponding new algorithms to resolve these issues. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms and the efficiency of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathsf {OpenMPL}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> .