Fixed origin corner square inspection layout regularity metric

Integrated circuits suffer from serious layout printability issues associated to the lithography manufacturing process. Regular layout designs are emerging as alternative solutions to help reducing these systematic subwavelength lithography variations. However, there is no metric to evaluate and compare the layout regularity of those regular designs and there is no methodology to link layout regularity to the reduction of process variations. In this paper we propose a new layout regularity metric called Fixed Origin Corner Square Inspection (FOCSI). We also provide a methodology using the Monte Carlo analysis to evaluate and understand the impact of regularity on process variability.